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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22732669">Not So Different</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Malteaser/pseuds/effing_gravity'>effing_gravity (Malteaser)</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Good Omens (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe- Hell Won the First War, Aziraphale is "just enough of a bastard to be worth knowing" (Good Omens), BAMF Aziraphale (Good Omens), BAMF Crowley (Good Omens), Biblical Allusions (Abrahamic Religions), Biblical Reinterpretation, Canon Universe, Crowley Was Not Raphael Before Falling (Good Omens), Family Drama, Good Omens Big Bang 2019, Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), M/M, Mentions of Historical Travesties, Multiverse, Mutual Pining, Reverse Omens, The Fall (Good Omens), War in Heaven (Good Omens)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-02-15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-02-16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-04-28 17:21:38</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>9</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>25,210</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22732669</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Malteaser/pseuds/effing_gravity</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>When a demon named Crowley walked into the bookshop one day to find a demon named Aqzirab closing it up like he owned the place, he was understandably confused. When he found out that he himself was in the wrong universe, his confusion deepened. In the next universe over, an angel named Gadreel was experiencing something similar with an angel named Aziraphale. </p><p>Or, in which there are multiple timelines, Gersonides was really on to something, and the Archangel Raphael is there.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Aziraphale &amp; Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>44</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>259</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Good Omens Big Bang 2019</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">


        <li>
            Inspired by

            <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22751215">Art for Not So Different</a> by <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/KakushiMiko/pseuds/KakushiMiko">KakushiMiko</a>.
        </li>

    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Hey, it's finally time for me to start posting this! Expect the rest of the chapters to be trickling in over the course of the day.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>One day, out of nowhere, Crowley suddenly felt a bit peculiar. Then, even more suddenly, the world was a violently spinning miasma of color and sound. A few moments later he was on the ground being peered at by a bunch of concerned strangers. </p><p>His glasses hadn’t fallen off, which was good. Not a minute later he was upright and the various people surrounding him couldn’t quite remember what all the fuss had been about. No one paid him the slightest bit of attention as he took off down the street, which might have had something to do with the fact that he was moving just a bit quicker than the human eye could comfortably follow. [1]</p><p>He had no idea what he’d just been hit with, but one thing was for certain: he’d been attacked by something powerful, and if he’d been attacked then an attack on Aziraphale might already be underway. </p><p>He skidded to a stop just outside the bookshop, for all intents and purposes appearing out of thin air. The sign on the shop said CLOSED, and the door was already opening as Crowley reached for it. It was already opening because the shop’s owner was stepping out. </p><p><i>Oh no,</i> Crowley thought. <i>Oh no, nononononononono. Why now? Why would he Fall now?</i></p><p>If he’d been able to be even slightly more observant, he might have noticed that the other demon looked every bit as horrified and anguished as he felt. As it was, neither of them noticed anything amiss until they spoke. </p><p>“Aziraphale?” Crowley asked, and was asked at the same time “Gadreel?”</p><p>“Wait, what?”</p><p>“How do you know-”</p><p>They stopped for a moment, regarding one another with suspicion. [2]</p><p>“Something happened, just now,” Crowley began. </p><p>“You think?”</p><p>“Something happened <i>to me</i>. I don’t know what, I just know that it left me collapsed on the street. I figured it was at least one of our Home Offices, and so came running here in case they were trying something with you. How do you know what my name was?”</p><p>“It’s the only name I’ve ever known you by,” replied the demon who was definitely not Aziraphale. “How long have you been a demon?”</p><p>“Trick question,” Crowley replied. </p><p>“How so?” Not-Aziraphale asked. He had an unnervingly even tone to his voice, like he knew he could deck you, but was, in the interests of not exerting himself, going to give you one last chance to avoid that fate. Crowley, who had never quite managed to generate such a subtle aura of menace, was a little impressed. </p><p>“Time hadn’t been invented yet,” he replied. </p><p>Aziraphale- or whatever his name was- nodded. “We probably shouldn’t have this conversation on the street. Come inside, darling.”</p><p>Crowley blinked at the endearment, and then followed not-Aziraphale inside. </p><p>“The shop’s cleaner,” Crowley said as he entered. It was the first thing that popped out to him. </p><p>“Is it?” Not-Aziraphale asked. “I was just thinking that it needed cleaning.” He flicked his wrist up and snapped, and the place was suddenly in better condition than Crowley had ever seen it, including opening day. </p><p>“Huh,” Crowley said. Right- Hell was a lot less uptight about things like ‘frivolous use of miracles’ than Heaven, so there was no reason for this not-Aziraphale not to use it to clean. The cleanliness wasn’t the only difference either. The stock was all new too- or at least, newish- and as he squinted he could make out something about chemical trails controlling global warming. The layout was more open, more people friendly. There were even chairs for potential customers to sit at, over near the window.</p><p>“Are you injured?” Not-Aziraphale asked. </p><p>“No. Why?”</p><p>“You’re walking funny.”</p><p>“I am not! This is just how I walk.” He was quite proud of his walk, actually. It took him ages and ages to make it human enough to pass, and pass with style.</p><p>“Hm. That’s new. Or different, at least.”</p><p>The demon’s shop was more different from the angel’s shop than the demon was to the angel, at least at first glance. From the way he was being looked at, Crowley got the impression that it was much the same with him and his angelic counterpart. </p><p>“So. What is your name, then, if not Gadreel?” Not-Aziraphale asked. His eyes were brown, that was one difference there: very brown in a way that spoke of the iris to sclera ratio being a little skewed. He also thought they might be a bit bigger.</p><p>“Crowley,” he replied. “Anthony J Crowley, for the humans. You?”</p><p>“Aqzirab,” he replied. “I generally just let the humans fill in whatever they feel is most likely for the sake of paperwork. Most recently it’s been Ackermann.” His hair was straighter, and there seemed to be more of it. It was held back from his face with the same pair of superfluous reading glasses Aziraphale liked to wear when examining new manuscripts. It gave him a kind of Einstein vibe. Or maybe a more generic mad scientist one.</p><p>“Aqzirab,” Crowley repeated. “How'd you come up with that?”</p><p>“Tried to give my name and rank while being physically unable to do so, and also gargling sulfur,” Aqzirab replied dryly, with a shrug of his shoulders. Those were a bit different too: more built up, and not quite built correctly, like he had an extra muscle group hidden somewhere under his chestnut-brown Edwardian suit. “I can’t say I really thought much of it, but Mikka took it up, and that was that.”</p><p>“You should change it,” Crowley said, taking note of the name. It was obvious that Aqzirab expected Crowley to know who Mikka was, but he didn’t know of any demon who went by that name. “I did. I was Crawley at first, but it didn’t suit, so I just kept switching it around until I found one I liked.”</p><p>Aqzirab opened his mouth, and then spent some time thinking before actually saying anything. “You know, Crowley, I suppose there really isn’t a reason I couldn’t change it now.”</p><p>New development, Crowley noted. “Armageddon?” He asked. </p><p>“Averted,” Aqzirab replied curtly. </p><p>“Same. We had a little trouble with our Home Offices afterwards, but they saw reason in the end.” Crowley looked around the shop, which kept striking him with new and exciting things that were wrong. “Or so we thought, at least. It’s been three years. If this is them, it’s their first attempt since.”</p><p>“Is there anyone else who could pull such a thing off?” Aqzirab asked.</p><p>“Not that I know of,” Crowley admitted. “At least not from my… timeline? I’m assuming that’s what’s happening here.”</p><p>“It’s as good a guess as any, from where I’m standing,” Aqzirab said with another shrug of his massive shoulders. </p><p>They stood there, regarding one another, looking for a sign that this was some kind of trick. </p><p>“Is Gadr-aaah, nope, can't say it even in an alternate universe. Is angel-me still here, do you think?”</p><p>Aqzirab was already shaking his head. “I was on the phone with him. He said he felt odd, and then the connection cut out- all connections. I can’t sense his or any other angelic presence in the entire city. His phone’s also not showing up on the tracker- I was just about to go out and try to figure out where he got snatched from when you showed up.”</p><p>Crowley blinked a little at the notion of a version of Aziraphale who understood how to track people’s mobiles, but continued gamely with “Sounds like what happened to me. If we’re lucky, he’s in my timeline, trying to work this out with Aziraphale.” [3]</p><p>Aqzirab nodded. “So. Do you think this came from your universe’s people or mine?”</p><p>“Haven’t a clue,” Crowley admitted. “I’m not even sure what this is meant to be doing. Making you- Aziraphale- Fall is one thing, I guess.” It would put Aziraphale under Hell’s control, which was always something Crowley had hoped to avoid, and it would also nullify their ability to avoid another attempt at being executed. Though, he guessed he and Aqzirab wouldn’t be able to pull that off either. “Putting me in the universe where he- or, well, you- did is another one.”</p><p>“It’s equally possible that they wanted Gadreel to Fall,” Aqzirab pointed out. “Seeing as you appear to be in our timeline.”</p><p>“Doesn’t explain the switch, though, does it?” Crowley asked. “What with him disappearing presumably to my timeline and all.”</p><p>“Well, there is that,” Aqzirab shrugged. “Unfortunately, there’s a very good chance that someone will come here and want to tell us all about it.”</p><p>“There are wards,” Crowley said. It wasn’t a question- he could feel them, built up and layered together over the centuries. </p><p>“Enough to give us a bit of a warning and a good chance of escaping unscathed,” Aqzirab told him. “In terms of holding whichever angel or demon is responsible for this long enough for them to tell us how to reverse this, however… that might be pushing our luck.”</p><p>They were at least going to pretend to trust one another, then. Crowley could work with that.</p><p>“I can make a demon trap,” Crowley volunteered. “Angels, though…”</p><p>“Yes, they do tend to have a bit of an unfair advantage, don’t they,” Aqzirab agreed. “Hmm. You know, I might have something in the back. Just- stand there and don’t touch anything yet.”</p><p>Crowley raised an eyebrow. Aqzirab gave no indication that he either saw or cared, but did reappear carrying something long and thin, wrapped in oilcloth. </p><p>“You know, I don’t think I’ve seen actual oilcloth in about ten million years,” Crowley said. </p><p>“Is your universe so old?” Aqzirab asked.</p><p>“You know what I mean,” Crowley groaned. </p><p>Aqzirab tucked the wrapped something under his arm and went over to the till. “Chalk works for demon traps in this universe. I presume it’s the same in yours?”</p><p>“Yep.”</p><p>Aqzirab pulled out a little nub of chalk and tossed it to him with surprising force. It stung his palm a little when he caught it. </p><p>It only took a few minutes for Crowley to draw out a catch-all trap. It was general enough that most demons would at least be slowed down by it. Unfortunately, without knowing the name of whoever it was that was going to be coming to ‘tell them all about it’, if the demon in question had any kind of power or cleverness, it wasn’t going to do more than that.</p><p>“That’s about as good as it gets,” Crowley said, stepping back. “So long as we avoid stepping in it, we’re good.”</p><p>Aqzirab snapped, and a rug appeared over the trap. </p><p>“You’re going to smudge my work,” Crowley complained. </p><p>“It’s floating just above the trap, darling, don’t you fret,” Aqzirab said with a roll of his eyes. </p><p>Crowley bent down and squinted. Sure enough, the rug was floating. “Well,” he said, standing back up. “That’s alright then.”</p><p>Aqzirab nodded again. Crowley nodded back. They stood there for a moment in silence, Aqzirab with his parcel, and Crowley with the bit of chalk. ‘Eventually,’ he thought, ‘One of us is going to have to ask.’ [4]</p><p>To his surprise, it was Aqzirab who did. “How did you Fall, if you don’t mind my asking?”</p><p>“I asked a lot of questions, hung around with the wrong people,” Crowley replied. “It wasn’t really a Fall so much as a Saunter Vaguely Downwards. You?”</p><p>“I was a soldier. There was a war, I fought, and my side lost,” he said simply. </p><p>Crowley opened his mouth. </p><p>“And that’s the pleasant lies we tell everyone out of the way,” Aqzirab said before Crowley could. “If we’re going to continue this conversation, I’m going to insist that we break out the really potent alcohol.”</p><p>“Fine by me,” Crowley said. “I have a feeling this is going to be a bit of a day anyway.”</p><p>“We’re already at <i>a bit of a day</i>,” Aqzirab grumbled. “How do you feel about rum?”</p><p>“Potently,” Crowley replied. </p><p>They sat in the chairs by the front of the store. Aqzirab tucked the parcel next to his seat on the inside, facing the shop; otherwise, they were in plain view of everyone passing by on the street. </p><p>“Different?”</p><p>“Extremely. Normally we’re tucked away in the back.”</p><p>“In the stock room?” Aqzirab asked. </p><p>“It’s a sitting room where I'm from,” Crowley said. “I don’t think Aziraphale has a stock room. Or much ‘stock’, really. The whole thing’s more of a place for him to stick his accumulated collection of first editions than an actual store.”</p><p>Aqzirab paused in the middle of pouring to stare at him in horror. “He keeps first editions on the sales floor? Where people can <i>touch</i> them?”</p><p>“And he makes that exact face when people try too,” Crowley said with a laugh. “Why, where do you keep yours?”</p><p>“I keep my private collection in my private home, as Mikka intended,” Aqzirab said, sounding scandalized. </p><p>There was that name again. Before Crowley could ask there was a knock on the door. </p><p>“We’re closed!” Aqzirab said brightly, pointing to the sign on the window which read OPEN BY APPOINTMENT ONLY :) :) :). </p><p>The three smilies really sold the passive-aggressiveness of it. Crowley joined Aqzirab in on beaming and waving until the man gave up and went off in a huff. </p><p>“Well, I can see why you like doing your drinking here,” he said, raising his glass. </p><p>“The palpable frustration does add something to the bouquet,” Aqzirab agreed. </p><p>They clinked glasses, and drank. Another cautious silence fell between them. </p><p>Crowley decided to be the one to break it this time. “So. Who’s Mikka?”</p><p>Aqzirab blinked. “What?”</p><p>“Mikka. You keep mentioning them. Who are they?”</p><p>Aqzirab gaped at him. </p><p>“What?” Crowley asked.</p><p>“She’s the devil?” Aqzirab offered, after a moment to compose himself. “Or she is here, at least. Why, who has the job where you’re from?”</p><p>“Satan,” Crowley said, quietly reeling. </p><p>“Who?”</p><p>“Satan! How could there not be a Satan? You have to know Satan, there wouldn’t be any demons otherwise.”</p><p>“I assure you I don’t.”</p><p>“Satan! You know, Lucifer, the Morningstar! The bloody Light-bringer!” Crowley stopped, because he could tell that that last one was recognizable. </p><p>“He’s Sataniel, here, I think,” Aqzirab said. Crowley had almost forgotten, how differently those first two syllables had been pronounced, back in the day. “Accuser of God, High General of Heaven’s Armies. And yes, he’s called Light-bringer here as well.”</p><p>“The High General of Heaven is Michael, where I’m from,” Crowley told him. “Is that-”</p><p>“Mikka,” Aqzirab said. “I’m pretty sure that was Mikka’s name, before the Fall.” [5]</p><p>They sat there, each looking sick. </p><p>“Are you- are you telling me that this is a timeline where the Rebellion succeeded?” Crowley asked finally, since someone should. </p><p>“It’s called the Revolution here,” Aqzirab told him. “And yes. It did.”</p><p>“How does that even work?” Crowley demanded. “Is this- does Heaven like people asking questions, here?” That sounded pretty ideal, actually.</p><p>“From what Gadreel has told me, they like it if they’re the right sort of questions,” Aqzirab told him. “Ones they already have answers to. And you don’t question the answers.”</p><p>Crowley felt his face wrinkle is disgust. What a fucking waste. Then something else occurred to him. “Is God evil?”</p><p>“I’ve often wondered,” Aqzirab said tiredly. “She’s not aligned with Hell, though, if that’s what you’re really asking.”</p><p>Crowley stared at him, and then turned and stared out the window. </p><p>“You know,” he said after a moment. “I always thought that if my side had won, there would have been more screaming.”</p><p>“I’ve had the same suspicion myself,” Aqzirab admitted. “I take it that this doesn’t look very different to your timeline?”</p><p>“I’m sure there are some differences,” Crowley said. “I mean, there have to be, right? But nothing big. Nothing I noticed until I saw you, at least.” [6]</p><p>Aqzirab nodded, and then he smiled. </p><p>“What?” Crowley asked. </p><p>“I’ve just realized that we’ve really had almost no influence on them at all,” Aqzirab said. “I bet our bosses would <i>love</i> to know that.”</p><p>“They’d probably pass that off as us being bad at our jobs,” Crowley said. “Which, I don’t know about you, but I was never all that enthusiastic about it. I like watching people squirm, when they’ve done something to deserve it, and I also enjoy a bit of mass frustration, but otherwise...”</p><p>Aqzirab shrugged. “I followed orders, mostly, right up until just before the end. Beyond that, my time was spent mainly on me.”</p><p>“Did you ever get a commendation for something you didn’t do?” Crowley asked. “I used to. All the time.”</p><p>“Yes.” Aqzirab nodded, his mouth cutting an unhappy line across his face. “I spent most of WWII trying to convince Hitler and as many of his underlings I could get through to to kill themselves. Was there a Hitler is your universe?” Crowley nodded, so Aqzirab continued with “Well, that’s disappointing. Anyway, when I finally succeeded, it was only because the Allies were at their doorstep, and many of them killed their wives and children before themselves. Then I came home, found that I’d earned several commendations for Nazism itself.”</p><p>“Yeah, that tracks,” Crowley said, draining the rest of his rum. </p><p>“You know, I think we might need something stronger,” Aqzirab said. “Does tequila still make you all twirly?”</p><p>“Twirly?” Crowley asked.</p><p>For an answer, Aqzirab pulled out his mobile, tapped a little bit, and then dropped it in front of Crowley. The video was already playing. </p><p>The video was of him. Or, well. It was video of the angel he would have been, if he’d never Fallen. [7]</p><p>It had been taken in the bookshop, and the angel was attempting to dance. He was, if anything, even worse than Crowley at it, and was mostly spinning around in circles while making dubstep noises with his mouth. </p><p>“Wait, wait wait,” the angel said suddenly, coming to a stop. “Are you recording this?”</p><p>“Of course not, darling,” came Aqzirab’s voice, sounding like butter would not have melted in his mouth. </p><p>“You bastard,” the angel replied, stalking towards him. End of video. </p><p>Crowley stared down at the screen for a moment. The angel looked back, seemingly annoyed even with the beginnings of a smile on his face. They looked very similar: sharp cheekbones, eyes hidden by glasses. His eyes had always been yellow, even if they were once more human-like in shape. A lot of angels used a glamor to change their eye color, but then again, a lot of angels were only down on Earth for a few hours at a time, not stationed permanently like Aziraphale. </p><p>Or like bleeding <i>Gadreel</i>, apparently. </p><p>“My hair did used to be black back in the day, didn’t it?” he said quietly. Then he caught sight of the view count, and did a double take. “Three million views? That is <i>evil</i>.”</p><p>“Thank you,” Aqzirab replied as he set the tequila down. “I may no longer work for Hell, but I do like to keep my hand in.”</p><p>Crowley set down the mobile and poured for them both as Aqzirab took his seat. Aqzirab took his phone back, picked up his glass, and looked out the window. </p><p>“You know, I really- I really thought that was all predestined,” Crowley said, following his gaze. The street was full of very normal looking people doing very normal looking people things. “Us losing, that is.”</p><p>“Yes. I also thought we were always meant to lose,” Aqzirab said. </p><p>Crowley was expecting, because his voice sounded the same as Aziraphale’s, to hear the familiar argument for ineffability. ‘Oh, well, we’re from different timelines’, he was going to say. ‘I suppose we were meant for different things.’</p><p>“I also thought I didn’t have any more faith to lose after that,” Aqzirab said instead. “I suppose I was wrong about that too.”</p><p>It took Crowley a moment to think of a good response to that. “And then it turned out that the only predestined thing was for humans to discover global warming so we could enjoy regular 37 degree summers here in England.”</p><p>“Ha!” Aqzirab said, mirthless and bitter. “Well. I suppose we can put ‘making them completely impervious to celestial meddling on a large scale’ down in the category of good things that pear of yours has produced.”</p><p>Crowley started. </p><p>“Or, well. I suppose my counterpart must have done that in your timeline,” Aqzirab said hurriedly. </p><p>“You mean the forbidden fruit, of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil? From the Garden?” Crowley asked. </p><p>Aqzirab nodded. </p><p>“They’re settled on calling it an apple right now, where I’m from,” Crowley told him. “And no, that was me. I gave them that fruit.”</p><p>“And you were already Fallen when you did it?” Aqzirab asked. </p><p>Crowley nodded.</p><p> “How did your people react?”</p><p>“Oh, they loved it,” Crowley told him. “They loved it so much that the devil himself ended up taking credit for it. Why? How did that all go down here?”</p><p>“Well,” Aqzirab said after a moment. “Not to be crass but… might I suggest that I show you mine and you show me yours?” [8]</p><p>“I think we’d better,” Crowley replied.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>[1] Meanwhile, elsewhere, an angel picked himself off the pavement, waved aside the concern of various onlookers, and began to make his way to Soho. He was technically travelling at a much more sedate pace than Crowley, because he was not breaking any of the laws of physics as he did so.</p><p>[2] Due to the aforementioned lack of breaking of the laws of physics, there was a several minute lag between this meeting, and that of Gadreel and Aziraphale.</p><p>[3] It was at about this time that Gadreel and Aziraphale did meet. Their initial reaction to seeing one another was delight. They’d always known that, deep down, the other was a good person. This very quickly morphed into horror as they remembered that Heaven was not, at present, being governed by good people, and then very quickly devolved into confusion as each said the other’s name and heard what sounded like the name of a turn of the 20th century occultist and a string of nonsense syllables, respectively.</p><p>[4] “I should have known it wasn’t you- or that you weren’t Aqzirab, whatever- when I saw the tartan,” Gadreel said.<br/>“Do I not like tartan as a demon?” Aziraphale asked.<br/>“You’re more of a houndstooth man,” Gadreel replied. “Or he is, or whatever.”<br/>A little frown line appeared on Aziraphale’s forehead. ““You know, of all the things I thought might change if I Fell, my taste in textile patterns had not made the list.”</p><p>[5] “Well, the good news is, whoever is responsible for this will likely come to us,” Aziraphale said. “The bad news is, they’ll likely be quite rude about it.”<br/>“Rude people? In your bookshop?” Gadreel smirked. “Perish the thought.”<br/>The smirk dropped off his face as he took in the confusion on Aziraphale’s.<br/>“You don’t host meetings for conspiracy theorists here, do you,” Gadreel realized.<br/>“Oh my Heavens, no,” Aziraphale confirmed quickly, looking aghast.</p><p>[6] “Is there anyone we can rely on for help here?” Gadreel asked. “Dad or anyone?”<br/>“When you say Dad, do you mean God?” Aziraphale asked.<br/>“Ha, no,” Gadreel scoffed nervously. That was a definite no on ‘Dad’ then. Shame, really. He’d thought that if they’d both Fallen they might have been closer, but if even Aqzir- even Aziraphale didn’t know about him, then they probably were not close at all.<br/>Or maybe he hadn’t Fallen here. Maybe that had been Gadreel’s fault after all.<br/>“I might have called her Mum once, but you didn’t hear that from me,” he added.<br/>“Ah, well then,” Aziraphale said. He’d obviously noticed the deflection, but he didn’t seem inclined to call him out on it. “No. We’re pretty much the entirety of our side, I’m afraid.”</p><p>[7] “So, just for curiosity’s sake,” Gadreel began. He paused, but when Aziraphale offered up no mockery he continued, feeling slightly off-kilter, with “How different am I, as a demon?”<br/>“Well, you walk differently, for one thing,” Aziraphale said. He kept worrying at his clothes: at his cufflinks, his buttons, the hem of his waistcoat. Gadreel kept wanting to offer him one of his spare fidget cubes, and then remembering that he’d given the last of them away last week and had yet to buy more. “Less of the vertical, more of the horizontal.”<br/>Gadreel wrinkled his nose. “What does that mean?”<br/>“Crowley doesn’t skip,” Aziraphale explained. “He saunters.”<br/>“Oh. Huh.”</p><p>[8] “I’ve got another question,” Gadreel said. He waited, and this time Aziraphale did jump in, though it wasn’t exactly with mockery.<br/>“I’ll try to provide you with an answer.”<br/>“Yeah, great, thanks,” Gadreel said. “How did we meet in this universe, if I became a demon and you remained an angel.”<br/>Aziraphale smiled, without a trace of bitterness. It was a strange, lovely thing to see. “Oh, well, it’s a long story. Back in the beginning, I was technically on apple tree duty…”<br/>“Wait,” said Gadreel. “Apple tree?”</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Chances are good that you already know the story of the demon Crowley- then called Crawley- and how he tempted Eve with an apple, and brought about the Fall of Man. Of course, chances are equally good that you’re familiar with the story of the demon Aqzirab, and the tragedy that befell humanity on account of his sword.</p><p>Let’s tell both stories then. That way, everyone will be on more or less the same page.[1] </p><p>The demon Crawley was made from the Fall of the Watcher Gadreel, who had sided with Lucifer during the Rebellion, and was therefore on the losing side. He never felt like he’d had much of a choice in the matter. Most of his family were with Lucifer, and most of his friends, so he chose exile with them over a God who wouldn’t answer his questions and the increasingly paranoid and totalitarian angels who remained loyal to Her. </p><p>Then came the Rebellion. The First War. He’d always considered himself to be quite handy with a spear. When the first line of actual soldiers hit, he saw how wrong he had been. </p><p>There was a duel between Michael and Lucifer, he later learned. Somehow or another, that was the deciding factor. Michael had won, and then she’d become a conduit for something- God’s will was the traditional presumption- and sentenced all the Rebels to Fall. </p><p>Crawley saw exactly none of that. He managed to fight his way back to the triage area, and discovered that he was a much better healer than he was a spearman. Eventually, when it became obvious that the tide of the battle had no chance of turning in their favor, he gathered what family he could find and sounded the retreat with the wounded. They were already halfway back down to Hell when the Great Fall began in earnest. The Watchers found the lack of distance between themselves and their destination wasn’t as big a help as they might have hoped. Most of them didn’t survive, and the few who did were scattered, meeting only when the realms of fiefdoms of Hell had been carved out and everyone was feeling pressured to pledge allegiance to those feuding powers.</p><p>Crawley was, of course, one of those survivors. Coiled in tight around himself, he learned to hide, and then he learned to move, and most of the rest followed naturally: the pain, the grief, the anger. What didn’t follow was the ambition, the hunger for status and the illusion of security it provided. A great many demons fought among themselves, carving out little pockets of power as they carved into one another. Crawley didn’t much like violence, and didn't end up with so much as a seat on the local council. That was fine. What he did end up with was better: a reputation for being able to slither his way out of trouble and not be caught by whoever it was who wanted to catch him. </p><p>‘Whoever’ did not extend to Satan, of course, but that was to be expected. At any rate, the Devil didn't need to lower himself to actually physically trying to catch Crawley. Every demon knew to answer his call when it came.</p><p><i>Get up there and make some trouble.</i> Simple enough to do. The only thing really on up there was the Garden, so up to the Garden he went. </p><p>He took his time with it, after he arrived. There was no telling when he might be able to get out of Hell next, and he intended to make the most of his freedom while he had it. He could always spin a story later, about reconnaissance and intelligence gathering and such. For now he just enjoyed himself: warmth that didn’t burn, light from the sun for half the day and from the moon and stars for the rest of it. [2]</p><p>The Garden of Eden really was a paradise, and he wasn’t just saying that because he’d previously lived in Hell. The animals all lived in harmony, and all two of the people who existed lived in harmony as well. And he did learn a bit. They were naming things that had never needed names before. The form Crawley had taken, for example: before it had just been Crawley. It had kind of been why he was called Crawley, really. </p><p>Eve cooed over him, and Adam gave him a new name not too terribly dissimilar to hers. Then the Archangel Raphael descended from Heaven for a little divinely-mandated story time, and Crawley ended up curling up under a rock for a while. Incidentally, that was when he first learned that naps were his thing. </p><p>The name Adam had given him wasn’t. It was the name he used when he did it. The Big One. The Fall of Man, as certain parties would later term it. He stuck with Crawley for the next long while. It didn’t really suit him, but it was better.</p><p>It wasn’t hard. It was really astounding, how not hard it was. There was the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, right there at the center of the Garden, great honking proverbial DO NOT TOUCH sign on it. It might as well have had a sign on it reading EASIEST WAY TO CAUSE TROUBLE. </p><p>He didn’t think it would be anything quite as dramatic as it ended up being. What was so wrong about knowing the difference between Good and Evil? He’d meant that, when he said it to Eve. He still did. </p><p>She ate the fruit, and then she shared it with her husband, so that they might be equals- and really what was so bad about that? Thousands of years of patriarchy that had just barely begun to come undone <i>now</i> blamed itself on that moment, and God never stepped in to say anything to the contrary about it. </p><p>She sure stepped in to make sure that they knew that it had been wrong to eat that fruit in a hurry. There was more divine shouting on that day than there had been on the day Crawley Fell. </p><p>God kicked the pair of them out, in the end. It took months to decide, apparently- enough time for the pair of them to think that they might have been forgiven, and to offer Her praise for Her mercy, even- but out through the little crack in the wall that was calling itself the Eastern Gate they went. </p><p>The Eastern Gate itself was guarded by a Principality[3] called Aziraphale, not that Crawley knew that at the time. At the time, all he knew was that the angel was standing in the best spot to watch the humans go. </p><p>And, also, that he should have had a sword. </p><p>He did not, in fact, have a sword. He’d given it away. He didn’t want to send the humans off into the wilderness all defenseless and such, so he’d handed his sword off and now here they were, watching Adam make a go at a hungry lion with it. </p><p>Crowley mentally lowered his risk of being smote down to negligible levels, and settled in to enjoy the presence of an angel who seemed willing to at least bend the rules for the greater good. [4] It was interesting. He liked that. </p><p>So he didn’t mention him to Hell when he made his report. It was very well received at first- while thankfully no one suggested that it was good, they see a bit stymied as to why it was bad, other than God apparently thinking so. And then, eventually, human souls started trickling in, and it became obvious what that fruit had accomplished. </p><p>Crawley was offered a cushy title, minions, and a little corner of Hell to call his own. In exchange for giving Satan all the credit for the deed, he got a permanent posting on Earth instead. </p><p>The rest was six thousand years of history in the making.</p><p>*</p><p>Aqzirab was made from the Fall of the Cherub Aziraphale [5], who did not feel he had sided with Mikka so much as he’d stayed with his formation, and his God. She created him to be a soldier, after all. He’d been drilling since his creation for a battle that was just now beginning to take shape. It didn’t seem right to abandon his post now, no matter what sort of misgivings he might have developed about his job. </p><p>The War was awful, of course. Probably would have been the worst experience of his life, even if he had been on the winning side. Physically he might have been prepared as one could wish to be, but no one had ever died before. The only source of grief had been exile, and as it happened in was one thing to know that one of the hashmallim under your command was exiled gone beyond your reach forever, and quite another to face her on the battlefield, and know that if you hesitated she would kill you. </p><p>Nothing had prepared him to kill, emotionally speaking. Physically speaking, he ended up being quite good at it, for whatever that meant. They still lost, after all. </p><p>It was Sataniel who won his duel with Mikka, and Sataniel who initiated the Great Fall. It was the work of a moment, for all that it took longer for them to process it. One brilliant flash of light and the Loyalists found themselves cut off from the Almighty and the way back to Heaven barred to them forever. To this day, he didn’t know what, if anything, they’d done wrong. </p><p>Those first days in Hell were miserable[6], but during them he’d gotten a certain reputation. After the Fall, he’d had himself a good cry, and then put himself together, and got on with things. The higher-ups were busy fighting amongst themselves, so Aqzirab made himself useful as a neutral party, a go-between while Ghalittor was in a snit with Araph and Mikka didn’t have the patience for either of them. By the time things were as close to being in order as they could get, he’d made himself indispensable. </p><p>With Hell considered settled, they move on to the next question: humanity. It had still been in the works when they all Fell, but according to Ghalittor’s spies the project had gone ahead, and there was now some hundred-odd humans living in the Garden of Eden.</p><p>No one could quite understand why this was, but they knew it couldn't be good news- not for them, at any rate. Something needed to be done, and someone needed to go up there and do it. Aqzirab was a natural choice: solid, dependable, and not quite yet cognizant of how well he could execute a power grab of his own. [7]</p><p>So, he read the reports, and then up to the Garden he went. His orders were simple: discover what Sataniel wanted with humanity, and stop him from getting it. </p><p>He didn’t dally. The Garden was beautiful, and he didn’t want to get attached when he knew he’d be returning to Hell when the job was done. </p><p>He skulked around a bit. He listened. The humans were visited by the angels quite frequently. They received instructions: <i>be fruitful and multiply</i>. They received promises: <i>one day, you will enter Heaven.</i></p><p>So, Heaven was using humanity as a way to bolster their numbers in preparation for another assault on the Loyalists, then. That was the first part of the job done. Now all he had to do was figure out how to thwart Sataniel’s plans. </p><p>This proved to be harder to do. A little more skulking yielded more information:</p><p> The angels who were shepherding humanity were known as the Watchers.<br/>Humanity needed a lot of shepherding, especially the little ones. They didn’t seem to have a very good grasp of cause and effect, especially when their actions affected other people.<br/>The humans, when they were ready, would ascend to Heaven upon flaming chariots.</p><p>That last point seemed promising, at least in terms of giving him something to work with. But as time wore on, and no flaming chariots appeared, and it became obvious to Aqzirab that whatever state of readiness humanity needed to achieve was far in the future. That was inconvenient. He was quite certain that his superiors were expecting him to report back swiftly, and his job was only half done. </p><p>There were too many angels in the Garden, and they were too close knit for him to be able to take them out with any measure of success. There were no chariots to sabotage. There was no way to seal off the Garden, not from Heaven. No, Aqzirab reluctantly concluded, there was no good way for him to separate Heaven from humanity. He was going to have to target the humans directly. </p><p>It was a simple enough thing to accomplish, once he’d decided to do it. The humans often quarreled with one another. It didn’t take much to ensure that several small, inconsequential fights broke out, keeping the Watchers distracted. Then he went to two of the eldest humans, Cain and Abel. They often argued. They sometimes came to blows. But never before had Abel held his sword. The Watchers, too preoccupied with all the smaller fights that had broken out, didn’t arrive in time to prevent the fatal blow from being struck. </p><p>It was a mess, and he wasn’t talking about the blood. None of the humans quite understood what had happened. The Watchers were all in a tizzy- he wasn’t quick enough to get his sword back, so they knew now, they had proof that there was a demon in the Garden. And then God made Herself known. </p><p>Up until that moment Aqzirab had believed Her to be dead. All demons did. They had no other explanation for the sudden gaping hole they all had where once Her presence had been. </p><p>Aqzirab paid no attention to the gaping hole he still had, or common sense. Neither of those things seemed to matter in the face of proof that God still lived. </p><p>So he revealed himself, and he knelt surrounded by his enemies, and God spoke to him. </p><p>“DEMON,” she said. “YOU HAVE BROUGHT DEATH TO THE GARDEN OF EDEN.” [8]</p><p>This was, to put it lightly, not the reunion Aqzirab had hoped for. It very suddenly occurred to him that if God hadn’t died, then She might have left them. She might have forsaken them, even.</p><p>Before the implications of this could quite set in, all havoc broke loose in the Garden. Taking advantage of the distraction Aqzirab had inadvertently created, one of the Watchers had taken matters into his own hands, plucked a fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and handed it to Adam. From that first bite, the world changed: predators knew to hunt, prey knew to fear, and people knew that they needed to leave the Garden, and the angels knew that their plan had failed. </p><p>Aqzirab took off in the midst of all the chaos, and intended to circle back around for his sword. By the time he managed it, his sword was already in use: Lilith had it, and was using it to protect one of her grandchildren from a hungry lion. </p><p>He waited until she’d dispatched the creature before revealing himself. Her eyes narrowed. She’d eaten of the fruit by now, and she knew what he was and what he’d done. </p><p>“You,” she said. </p><p>“Me,” Aqzirab agreed. “For what little it might be worth, I wasn’t expecting any of this.”</p><p>Lilith said nothing, which was more than fair. In the distance, there was quite a lot of shouting and roaring. </p><p>He could have taken his sword back from her. “Keep it,” he said. “I have a feeling you’ll need to use it again before too long.”</p><p>He turned to leave, and nearly walked into one of the Watchers- the very same Watcher who had given Adam the fruit, as it happened. The Watcher Gadreel. [9]</p><p>They conversed. It was surprisingly pleasant, considering the circumstances. Gadreel even laid his spear aside after a few wary glances from Aqzirab, and explained that the fruit wasn’t a guarantee of salvation for humanity. They could be damned, still, but this way they would have a choice in the matter. Eventually, though, they parted: the Watcher’s siblings would come looking for him sooner or later, and Aqzirab had to return to Hell to make his report. </p><p>Technically, he had done the job he’d been sent to do. As he’d also discovered that they’d all been forsaken by God, his superiors did not consider this adequate. </p><p>Actually, they thought he was lying about the whole thing. Absolutely nothing Aqzirab said or did could convince them that he wasn’t lying. In the end, they only believed him because the former Archangel of Healing came crashing down through the ceiling and corroborated his story. </p><p>For lack of better ideas, they sent him back to Earth to keep an eye on things, and try and skew things their way. That’s been his life ever since.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>[1] Whether people from two entirely different timelines <i>should</i> be on the same page is something to be discussed on a later date. For now, let’s just presume that something will be gained by the exercise.</p><p>[2] Some things are constant, no matter what. The stars always look different from Earth than they did up close, and he always cried when he heard Adam’s wife lead him out from under the canopy of trees and name them as he had named the animals.</p><p>[3] Aqzirab interrupts Crowley’s retelling exactly once, to ask, in an incredulous tone of voice “Was I demoted?”<br/>“Not as far as I know,” Crowley replies, a bit taken aback. The question doesn’t make sense, really. Aziraphale only cared about rank insofar as it made his life difficult, and it didn’t matter, in his version of Hell, what kind of angel you’d been before.  </p><p>[4] This being before small talk and the rules therein were quite invented, Crowley and Aziraphale ended up discussing the nature of free will and divine providence, subjects which would later seem quite uncouth to discuss with a newfound acquaintance in many cultures.</p><p>[5] When Gadreel told this story, all he said of the angel who would be Aqzirab was that after the Garden debacle he’d learned that he’d had some high-ranking position before the Fall. Aziraphale did not interrupt Gadreel, but he did make a face very much like he wanted to interrupt.</p><p>[6] The first days of Hell were always miserable, no matter what.</p><p>[7] In this version of Hell, your previous rank holds a great deal of weight. There isn’t meant to be a lot of shuffling around of the hierarchy, not in this timeline. Everyone is supposed to stay exactly where they were placed, if they knew what they were for. This is a self-reinforcing edict, which is to say that it gets thrown to the side whenever it encounters someone both determined enough to ignore it and canny enough to pretend like they aren’t.</p><p>[8] As Gadreel would later say in a misguided attempt at comfort, this was not untrue.</p><p>[9] Small talk and the rules therein had very much been invented at this juncture. Even if they had not, “Well, I’m only up here because we thought you’d murdered God” would have come across as a bit rude.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Chapter 3</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“So… Cain died in this timeline?”</p><p>“More or less. As it happens, he couldn’t choose salvation, which meant that his soul couldn’t enter Heaven so now he just kind of… floats around all discorporated and everything,” Aqzirab replied with a lazy wave of his hand. “Haven’t run into him in a while. Last I heard of him he was scaring tourists in China, though.”</p><p>“He’s immortal, in my timeline,” Crowley said. “Corporation and all. And he killed Abel. God marked him and stuff. S’his punishment.”</p><p>“Hm. That seems like a very strange punishment.”</p><p>“S’ God. Don’t expect much else from God, these days.”</p><p>“The bar She sets for sense is getting lower and lower with every passing day.”</p><p>“Too right.”</p><p>Over the course of their conversation, the tequila and the rum had both steadily disappeared into the two demons. Aqzirab was slouched back against his chair, tie loosened and top button undone. Crowley did not slouch so much as he sprawled, one leg so high up on the arm of his chair that it was practically thrown over the back of it. Every so often one of the pedestrians outside would stop and stare until Aqzirab waved them along. </p><p>It was surprisingly cozy, considering everything. Still, there was a constant thrum of tension. They both knew that something else had to be forthcoming, and neither of them quite trusted the other yet. </p><p>So when Aqzirab sat up abruptly, alcohol refilling the bottles as he sobered up, Crowley did the same. </p><p>“Wards?” He asked quietly.</p><p>“Just triggered on the roof,” Aqzirab replied. He reached down for his parcel and clutched at it tightly. “An angel, unfortunately. Unless they feel like demolishing some walls they’ll come in through the back door.”</p><p>Crowley nodded, and set himself up by the stockroom. Aqzirab stayed where he was: farther away from the angel than Crowley was, but clearly visible to whoever it was that was coming. </p><p>Somehow, in spite of everything, Crowley still expected it to be one of the angels he knew as <i>angels</i>: Gabriel, or Uriel, or Sandalphon. He was utterly unprepared for the sight of a Beelzebub still imbued with all the angelic graces he could barely even remember them having. [1]</p><p>He couldn’t help it. He laughed. Beelzebub’s eyes snapped to him. </p><p>“Gadreel,” they said, with holier-than-thou smugness. “I see you’ve finally Fallen.”</p><p>“You are- you are eons and <i>eons</i> too late to gloat about that,” Crowley told them in between wheezes. “You’re- for fuck’s sake, I don’t even remember what your name was before Beelzebub.”</p><p>Not-Beelzebub blinked at him, eyes narrowed is distrust. It was strange to see such a menacing expression on their face without the accompaniment of flies. Strange, and <i>hilarious</i>. He collapsed into giggles again. </p><p>The giggles weren’t faked, though the collapsing was. He wanted them to think he was more or less incapacitated- for them to draw closer. There was a shelf right next to him that look both incredibly heavy and incredibly unsteady. If he timed it correctly, it might buy them a few minutes to run out of the shop. He wasn’t sure what they would be doing after that, but getting out of the shop and onto the streets where a fight would be more trouble than it was worth was a priority right now.</p><p>He never got to see if that plan would have worked. Before Not-Beelzebub could draw close enough, they stopped, a blade wreathed in black, unholy fire that seemed to suck all the light out of the room held to their throat.</p><p>“Oh,” Crowley said, looking back towards the nook, Sure enough, the oilcloth was on the floor. “You got the sword back?”</p><p>“Did I not in your timeline?” Aqzirab asked him, not looking away from the angel, who was regarding him coolly. </p><p>“Nope. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him manage to hold on to any sword for more then a century or two on the outside, and he hasn't bothered with that much since firearms caught on,” Crowley told him. </p><p>“Good work if you can get it,” Aqzirab remarked. “Allow me to make introductions. Crowley, this is the Archangel Zebuleon. Zebuleon, this is the demon Crowley, who is also Gadreel from a timeline where your side lost the First War.”</p><p>Zebuleon gave a sort of full-bodied twitch. “That,” they said after a moment. “Was not meant to happen.”</p><p>Another weird thing about this: hearing them say ‘was’ as opposed to ‘wazzz’. “Zebuleon? That sounds like the name of some horny rancher in the American Southwest.”</p><p>“Does it?” Aqzirab replied. He still hadn’t looked away from Zebuleon, and he was holding his sword very steady and very near to their jugular. “It’s quite common here. Unisex name, you know. People sometimes shorten it to Zebu, or Zebully, though Leon is more typical.”</p><p>Zebuleon gave another full-bodied twitch. It was obvious that they did not appreciate the nicknames. </p><p>“This shouldn’t feel like the weirdest thing I’ve heard today,” Crowley replied. “And yet...”</p><p>“I have to admit, I’m surprised you came,” Aqzirab said to Zebuleon. “With the both of us being demons, we are, in theory at least, Hell’s problem, not yours.”</p><p>“You were expecting me to be him, weren’t you?” Crowley asked. “Other me, angel me. You were expecting to find him newly Fallen when you came here.”</p><p>“Yes,” Zebuleon admitted. “You were supposed to Fall.”</p><p>“I did Fall. I’m just not the Fallen angel you’re looking for,” Crowley said, with a Jedi-like wriggle of his hand. He was surprised when Aqzirab snorted in response. A version of Aziraphale that understood references to Star Wars was <i>weird</i>. That there even was a Star Wars in this alternate timeline was, objectively, even weirder.</p><p> “And that doesn’t explain the jurisdiction issue,” Aqzirab said. </p><p>“Oh, let me guess,” Crowley chimed in. “You came to some sort of arrangement with… whoever the fuck Gabriel became. Prince of Hell?” [2]</p><p>“That’s Ghalittor,” Aqzirab said. “And yes they did seem quite chummy at the airfield. And there was that strange bit of coordination during our failed executions. I suppose it was too much to hope that you would have fallen right back into planning to kill one another?”</p><p>“It’s still on the agenda,” Zebuleon assured him. “There are just a few unexpected stumbling blocks that need to be removed.”</p><p>“I’m flattered,” Aqzirab said, sounding anything but. </p><p>“Don’t be,” Zebuleon retorted. </p><p>They were still too docile for Crowley’s liking. Beelzebub would be snarling by now. Gabriel, he was pretty sure, would get all egotistical about it, act like it was cute that they thought they could harm an Archangel, whether he believed they could or not. Beelzebub with Gabriel’s job? He wasn’t sure what that would look like, but this was definitely not it.</p><p>“You’re waiting for something,” Crowley realized. </p><p>“Or someone?” Aqzirab guessed, when Zebuleon said nothing. “Is this another joint venture with Ghalittor, or did you bring your own underlings?”</p><p>“Wouldn’t you like to know?” Zebuleon said. </p><p>“I would very much like to know,” Aqzirab said. “And I must warn you, we’re rapidly approaching the part of this conversation where we find out if I want answers more than you want to keep all your fingers.”</p><p>Crowley turned sharply to Aqzirab, and then even more sharply when he caught sight of two nearly familiar figures lurking across the street. </p><p>Or, well. Whatever the angelic equivalent of lurking was. Surveilling, probably. Something that sounded all perfectly official and lawful.</p><p>“They brought their underlings,” Crowley said. “The two across the street. They’re called Hastur and Ligur in my universe. I don’t know what they’re called in this one.”</p><p>“I could hazard a guess,” Aqzirab said, though he didn’t turn around. “Darling, do me a favor and invite them inside, will you?”</p><p>That sounded like a monumentally bad idea. “What?”</p><p>“There’s no sense in letting them spring whatever trap they have on their own terms,” Aqzirab explained. “Let them inside.”</p><p>Crowley shrugged, and sauntered over to the front door. </p><p>“<i>Oi!</i>” he shouted. “You’ve been rumbled, boys. Come inside.”</p><p>Not-Hastur and Not-Ligur started, probably more from the sight of him than the volume. Crowley got it. They weren’t exactly what he was expecting to see either, and he was pretty sure that he’d known them, before the Fall. Known <i>of</i> them, definitely: tragic love story for the ages, those two. Their exile had been a public relations nightmare for Heaven, one they’d tried to ruthlessly suppress. It had only spread their story more widely- through Crowley’s part of Heaven, at least. </p><p>He couldn’t recall what their names had been either. </p><p>So, Not-Ligur: he had flaming red hair that he wore long and puffed out, and had eyes that were grey and showed no signs of changing any time soon. And then, Not-Hastur: his eyes were still jet-black, but they merely swallowed up his pupils rather than the entire eyeball, and his hair was still chalky pale, though distinctly curlier than Actual-Hastur’s. Not-Ligur was wearing some absolutely awful clothing that looked like it had been exclusively selected from things rejected by the BBC as being too outlandish for the Sixth Doctor to wear. Not-Hastur was wearing <i>pastels</i>, and even more horrifyingly, he was wearing pastel colors that were trying to compliment the monstrous riot of color that had vomited up over Not-Ligur. There was nary a reptile or an amphibian in sight, so at least he wasn’t going to be traumatized by watching them make out via the animals on their heads again. [3]</p><p>“You’ve taken to being Fallen quickly,” Not-Ligur observed. </p><p>“Yeah, I’ve had six thousand odd years to get used to being Fallen, and all morning to get used to the idea that I’m in some kind of alternate universe where our side won the First War and didn’t Fall,” Crowley told the two of them as they crossed the threshold. </p><p>“So we lost in yours?” Not-Hastur asked. His voice sounded very different. Soft, almost. “What is that like?”</p><p>“Roses and sunshine,” Crowley drawled.</p><p>Not-Hastur and Not-Ligur exchanged looks. </p><p>“We lost, and were cast into Hell!” Crowley snapped. “How do you think that went? You became two particularly sadistic Dukes and some of the worst bosses of all eternity, and I originated sin. The last time the three of us were in the same room I killed him in front of you. And that’s what it’s like.”</p><p>Not-Hastur, who still had a complexion like curdled milk, went even paler. </p><p>“Really darling, there’s no need to be cruel,” Aqzirab chided. He still had his sword to Zebuleon’s throat, and his grip was still exceptionally steady. </p><p>“Oh, I think there might be,” Crowley said. There had certainly been a need to at least appear cruel when dealing with these two back in his universe, and he hadn’t had anything that hadn’t needed a bit of explaining to make it sound perfectly evil since the War on Terror started, much less something he’d actually <i>done</i>. Of course, in addition to possibly terrifying Not-Hastur and Not-Ligur, there was the inescapable fact that he wasn’t the only demon in the room. “And weren’t you just threatening to cut off fingers?”</p><p>“Only if they refuse to answer my questions,” Aqzirab correctly serenely. “It’s hardly unavoidable.”</p><p>For a moment no one said anything. They just watched as Zebuleon and Aqzirab looked at one another, Zebuleon’s expression pinched, and Aqzirab’s very calm. </p><p>Too calm, or so Crowley felt. Aziraphale would be able to hold a sword that steady if he really put his mind to it, he knew, but he would be all nervous about it. Probably he’d be apologizing the entire time as he did so. </p><p>“But where are my manners,” Aqzirab said suddenly. “It’s time for another round of introductions, isn’t it? Yakiynton, Ra’ahael, this is Crowley, the Serpent of Eden from an alternate universe where your side lost. Crowley, this is my former commanding officer and current Archangel Yakiynton and his lover, the Archangel Ra’ahael.”</p><p>Former commanding officer? Well, that was certainly news to him. “Their names are very different in my timeline. Which is which?” he asked. </p><p>“Yakiynton is the redhead,” Aqzirab replied. </p><p>So, Not-Ligur then. Crowley wasted a moment trying to imagine a time and place where some version of Aziraphale would have been reporting to some version of Ligur, and failed. </p><p>It wasn’t really important, though, so he focused on the problem they currently had: they were currently outnumbered three to two, and the three outnumbering them were all Archangels, presumably with all the power that implied. On the face of it, this didn’t look good. </p><p>“Now, then,” Aqzirab said, giving a good impression of turning back to Zebuleon for all that he hadn’t ever looked away from them. “What exactly were you hoping would be accomplished here?”</p><p>“The Fall of the Watcher Gadreel, of course,” Zebuleon replied with a sneer. [4]</p><p>“Yeah, not sure how that works here, but that doesn’t traditionally involve alternate universes where I’m from,” Crowley said with a drawl. </p><p>“Nor here,” Aqzirab said. His head tilted slightly. “So, I suppose our next question is what went wrong?”</p><p>Zebuleon gave a good impression of a shrug without actually moving.</p><p>“Perhaps I should clarify,” Aqzirab said. “What went wrong with the usual processes that required you to breach universes?”</p><p>“I can take a guess,” Crowley said, when none of the angels seemed inclined to answer. “God’s not talking in this universe either, is She?”</p><p>The angels remained silent, though this time it was the silence of three people who did not want to admit that he was right.</p><p>“You know for a fact that She’s not speaking to Heaven in yours?” Aqzirab asked. For the first time since the sword had come out, he looked, if not distracted, then distractible.</p><p>“No one’s confirming anything, of course, but according to Aziraphale when the Metatron starts getting things wrong that’s a pretty good sign that no one actually has any idea what they’re doing,” Crowley said.</p><p>“Really,” Aqzirab replied. “And what did the Metatron get wrong, if you don’t mind my asking?”</p><p>“The War,” Crowley replied. “Did angel-me try to call him during the Apocanot?”</p><p>“He did not, and please desist in trying to give it a cutesy name,” Aqzirab said.</p><p>A bit of motion caught his eye, and he turned to find Ra’ahael edging a little to the left, and Yakiynton gliding a little to the right. He glared at them. Ra’ahael stopped, and glared back. Yakiynton pretended not to notice, and kept walking, making a show of inspecting the books and pretending like Aqzirab’s increasingly terrifyingly polite interrogation of Zebuleon was less interesting. </p><p>Crowley was beginning to think that he <i>wasn’t</i> pretending. Zebuleon was an Archangel- they were all Archangels. They were more powerful than either of the two demons in the room, so why the caution? Why the hanging back and waiting to make their move?</p><p>They didn’t know what they were capable of, that was the only explanation Crowley could think of. That might be an indication that they knew that Crowley would be- well, Crowley, instead of Gadreel, even if the specifics were different. But, of course, Aqzirab hadn’t said how they’d survived their executions. He’d barely even said that there had been executions, come to think of it, though he doubted very much that they’d looked very different. The same people were in charge here, after all. </p><p>It wasn’t too much of a stretch to think that, given all the other similarities between the humanity of this universe and that of his own, that there had been an Agnes Nutter here who’d looked out for them. [5]</p><p>So, hypothesis: the forces of Heaven thought Aqzirab was immune to holy water, and considered Crowley to be a dangerous unknown. Side note: Crowley was not, in fact, immune to holy water, and chances were slim to none that Aqzirab was immune either.</p><p>That was as far as he got before he realized his rookie mistake. Aqzirab had the Zebuleon situation well in hand. And he was keeping a close eye on Yakiynton as he strolled his fake-nonchalant way though the other demon’s shop. But Ra’ahael was standing still, and neither he nor Aqzirab paid him any mind until he sent a curse hurtling towards Crowley. </p><p>No, not a curse. Angels, Aziraphale’s part in the Arrangement aside, didn’t curse. But that was one Heaven of a smiting that Crowley just barely managed to dodge. </p><p>He rounded on Ra’ahael the very next instant, fangs elongating even as he threw himself at the Archangel. Ra’ahael wasn’t expecting that: his eyes went very wide as he tumbled over, head hitting the corner of the nearest display table as he went down. He had to use a miracle to stop his corporation from getting a concussion. While he was busy with that, Crowley pinned him down with his knees and did his level best to give him another one. </p><p>Yakiynton threw something, and Crowley let Ra’ahael roll them so that he was the one on top, hoping that it would take him out. No such luck: the something flew in an unnatural arch through the air and ended up in Zebuleon’s hands. </p><p>Zebuleon was no longer being held at sword point. Aqzirab had turned his back to them, his sword raised, clearly planning to come to Crowley’s aid and clearly surprised that he seemed to be holding his own. He turned back just in time to meet Zebuleon’s blow, and stop it from stabbing him. Ra’ahael took advantage of his distraction to punch him in the face. He managed to clip the side of his hand with one of his fangs, though, and he immediately fell back with a bellow of pain. Behind them Aqzirab let out a snort and stomped at the floor. Immediately, the books came alive, flitting over him as though confused- he must be too much like Gadreel to attack, but not so much like Gadreel that they recognized him- and diving straight towards Yakiynton and Ra’ahael. </p><p>The curse placed on them was minor, and Yakiynton disabled it with a blast of light, shredding the books into confetti in a moment. Crowley took the opportunity to get back to his feet. </p><p>“Well, would you look at that,” Ra’ahael sneered, clutching at his hand. For the first time, he sounded like his demonic counterpart from Crowley’s universe. “The maggot learned to fight.” [6]</p><p>Crowley laughed. No one ever needed to know that he was laughing at the idea of some version of fucking <i>Hastur</i> using the term ‘maggot’ as an insult. “Hell doesss that to you,” he hissed. He summoned a bit of Hellfire, a bit surprised and pleased when it worked despite the shift in universes and his complete non-allegiance to Hell, and spun it out into a short thin whip. “Best tend to that hand, Ra’ahael. You don’t want to find out what my bite does to a corporation.”</p><p>Ra’ahael and Yakiynton exchanged looks, and then Yakiynton lunged for him, a flaming sword just like the one Aziraphale had given away so long ago materializing in his hand. </p><p>Crowley couldn’t let the bookshop burn again. He just… couldn’t. Not even this bookshop, in an alternate universe, run by an alternate Aziraphale, who certainly didn’t care about his alternate stock if he’d primed them to turn into a weapon. But he could deflect. He was good at deflecting. Yakiynton didn’t land a hit on anything but Hellfire and empty air.</p><p>Every time he risked looking back, Aqzirab and Zebuleon were in a similar situation: equally matched and fighting one another to no apparent gain. If they couldn’t find a way to wrap this all up soon, Ra’ahael was going to be the deciding factor. </p><p>Like Heaven was Crowley going to let some alternate universe version of <i>Hastur</i> decide this. He snarled, and let the bit of Hellfire he’d summoned grow a bit wild. Or he tried to, at least: for whatever reason the Hellfire wasn’t being as willful as it should have been. It was like it wanted to stay orderly. </p><p>He had to force it to crackle and lash out at odd angles, which wasn’t what he’d wanted to be spending his energy on but was kind of worth it for the way Yakiynton’s eyes grew wide. </p><p>Only kind of, though, because it did nothing to either end the fight or prevent Ra’ahael from joining in. With a growl and a sneer that Hastur would have been proud of, he snapped the venom he’d forced from the scratch on the back of his hand away and entered the fray. He did this by starting to toss the furniture around: bookshelves, display tables, lamps… and the rug Crowley and Yakiynton were fighting on. </p><p>The rug which hid the demon trap Crowley had drawn. </p><p>Crowley knew what to expect when he felt the rug being dragged out from underneath him, and scrambled back as quickly as he could so he wasn’t caught in the trap when it was fully exposed. Yakiynton did not. It shouldn’t have mattered. It was a <i>demon</i> trap after all, and he wasn’t a demon. </p><p>Somehow, this did not stop him from becoming stuck in it. [7]</p><p>“What the-”</p><p>Ra’ahael lunged forwards, either reaching for Crowley or Yakiynton, and becoming stuck as well. </p><p>“Aqzirab!” Crowley called over his shoulder.</p><p>“Yes, I’ve noticed,” Aqzirab snapped. He and Zebuleon were still fighting, and still evenly matched. </p><p>Well, Crowley could fix that. He sent one of the chairs Ra’ahael had tossed onto the floor spinning into the back of Zebuleon’s legs. They didn’t go down arse over tea kettle as he’d hoped, but it did throw them off balance, enough for Aqzirab to gain enough of an edge to back them up until one of their feet was caught in the trap. </p><p>Zebuleon snarled and tried to jerk their foot free. Aqzirab headbutted them, and that sent them the rest of the way into the demon trap. </p><p>“Well!” Aqzirab said, seemingly inspecting the buttons on his waistcoat. His hands fell to his sides once he’d counted them all. “That was certainly invigorating.”</p><p>Crowley had ended up on one of the upturned bookshelves in his scramble to keep outside of his own trap. He hopped down now, careful not to touch the boundary lines that were still, at least for the moment, holding the three Archangels still. “It shouldn’t be able to do that.”</p><p>“Well, it’s done that,” Aqzirab pointed out. </p><p>“Yeah, but it shouldn’t be able to,” Crowley insisted. “It should only work on-”</p><p>When Aqzirab had headbutted Zebuleon, they’d lost their grip on their spear. It had rolled clear of the demon trap, and come to a stop against the leg of one of the tables that was still upright. Crowley went over to it and picked it up. It was holy, he could tell that straight off: he could feel it, the sort of energy that Heaven called purification and Hell called obliteration. The spear was holy, but it didn’t burn him. </p><p>“Huh,” Crowley said, collapsing it back into a travel-sized cylinder. “Interesting.”</p><p>Zebuleon made a protesting noise. When Crowley turned to face them again, he saw that there was a sickly glow of power gathering beneath their fingertips. </p><p>“That’s not going to hold them for long,” he said. </p><p>Aqzirab nodded, and rolled the sword back up in the oilcloth, which must have been made in Hell to withstand the unholy flame so well. “Well, it’s been rotten seeing you all, please hesitate to come calling again,” he told the Archangels. </p><p>“Ciao,” Crowley agreed, giving them a little wave before jogging threw the door Aqzirab was holding open for him. </p><p>Aqzirab didn’t bother to lock up as they left. He merely took hold of Crowley’s elbow for just long enough to steer him in the right direction before dropping it. </p><p>“I’ve parked the car over this way,” he explained.</p><p>“Right,” Crowley said, before he’d quite processed what Aqzirab had said. “Wait. You can drive?”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>[1] But of course, in the next timeline over, the Archangel Gabriel was the one to appear in the bookshop. Aziraphale expressed his disappointment and lack of surprise; Gabriel put on a good show of being confused.</p><p>[2] “That,” Gadreel said, sweeping a hand in Gabriel’s direction. “Is Ghalittor, the Prince of Hell. I’ve met him. He licks his own eyeball with the gecko on the side of his head, for Christssake!”<br/>“What,” said Not-Ghalittor, looking very much like he was the one out of his depth as Aziraphale tried and failed to smother his giggles.</p><p>[3] “Did we all switch? Is that what’s happening here?” Gadreel demanded, pinwheeling around dramatically. Or trying to pinwheel around, at least. Aziraphale’s shop was a lot more crowded that Aqzirab’s. It was like Aqzirab’s home had thrown up into his shop, really. “Is everyone who is a demon in my universe an angel in this one?”<br/>“Who runs Heaven in your universe?”<br/>“The Archangels Sataniel and Zebuleon have joint control,” Gadreel replied. Gabriel winced; Aziraphale looked thoughtful.<br/>“And Hell?” he asked.<br/>“Mikka, but I’m going to guess she goes by a different name here,” Gadreel told them.<br/>“Was her name ever Michael?” Aziraphale asked.<br/>“Might have been, yeah,” Gadreel said. “So that’s a yes on the switching?”<br/>“It would appear to be that way, yes.”</p><p>[4] “I don’t believe you,” Aziraphale said. He smiled like the expression was making him ill.<br/>“Why not?” Gabriel demanded. “I thought you’d be all for this, you seem to think he’s better than the rest of Heaven combined. If he’s so good, then why shouldn’t he Rise?”<br/>“Because no such mechanism exists,” Aziraphale replied stiffly. “I <i>did</i> consider putting forth Crowley as a candidate for redemption, once, a good one hundred and sixty years ago. I went looking for any kind of paperwork, any kind of process I could start, so he could have the option of returning to Heaven, should he so desire it. There was nothing. Heaven doesn’t forgive, Gabriel. You have made that more than plain.”<br/>“And, I’d just like to reiterate, I’m not now nor have I ever been Crowley, so none of that paperwork is good whether you made it up six seconds ago or not,” Gadreel added.   </p><p>[5] “Look, just come up with me to Heaven, and we can sort this whole thing out,” Gabriel said.<br/>“<i>No</i>,” Gadreel and Aziraphale said as one.<br/>“No?” Gabriel raised an eyebrow.<br/>“And I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to leave,” Aziraphale added. Gadreel expected him to pull his sword out from wherever he was hiding it over here, but no weapon appeared. He just stood before Gabriel, his hands clasped behind his back, and waited.</p><p>[6] <i>Oh fuck,</i> Gadreel though, watching Gabriel attempt to loom over Aziraphale. He knew what that was like. He had a sister that used to do that to him all the time. <i>I’m going to have to think of something, aren’t I?</i></p><p>[7] “What did you do?” Aziraphale demanded as Gabriel dropped like a stone to the bookshop store.<br/>“I thought that might work as a distraction,” Gadreel said, one hand still raised from where he had thrown the antique-looking leaden paperweight. “I wasn’t expecting it to <i>work</i> work.”<br/>“Well,” Aziraphale hesitated, and then a very familiar stubborn expression settled onto his face. “No sense in letting this opportunity go to waste. Let’s go before he wakes up.”</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Chapter 4</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“The Bentley?!”</p><p>Aqzirab paused in the act of getting into the driver’s seat, but only for a moment. “I thought you said that I didn’t drive in your timeline?”</p><p>“Did I?”</p><p>“You implied it.”</p><p>“Well, you don’t, I do, and this is my bloody car,” Crowley said, gesturing down at her. [1]</p><p>It really was- or really seemed like it, anyway. The same too-keen shine, the same way of being parked that gave off an air that was less like an inanimate object and more like a living being than any other vehicle ever could. It was his Bentley.</p><p>“It most certainly is not,” Aqzirab snapped. “Now get in before those Archangels break free of whatever it is you did to them.”</p><p>“It’s a demon trap,” Crowley insisted, though he did get. Being in the passenger seat was weird, he couldn’t even remember the last time he’d been a passenger in anything, save for maybe that bus ride back from Lower Tadfield. “It’s supposed to work on demons. I don’t know why- it’s got to be a case of multiverse thingies getting crossed, right? Every angel in this universe is a demon in mine, so maybe that reversed the polarity of the holiness flow or something?” Zebuleon’s spear was in his pocket still, all folded up and quiescent. It should have been burning a hole through his pocket into his side now. It wasn’t.</p><p>“I absolutely despise how you phrased that, but I think we can safely run with the assumption that whatever should work on demons in your universe will work on angels in mine, and probably vice-versa,” Aqzirab agreed. He didn’t peel away from the curb, and didn’t speed off like Crowley would have done, but he weaved so aggressively through the traffic that it didn’t make a great deal of difference. “Which is convenient.” He hesitated, just a beat. “It creates a nice, equal division of labor, I mean.”</p><p>“Yeah,” Crowley said. “Yeah, I guess it does.”</p><p>It would be even more convenient if they could trust one another. If Crowley was immune to this universe’s version of holiness, then it stood to reason that if he and Aqzirab could switch, the same way he and Aziraphale had, to the same effect. If Aqzirab would agree- if he knew how, if he and Gadreel had done similar to escape the retribution of their home offices, if he could trust Crowley.</p><p>Crowley wasn’t sure he could. Trust Aqzirab, that was. It was one thing to trust Aziraphale, who he’d spent six thousand years with. It was another to trust a demon he’d only met this morning, even if he did have roughly the same face.</p><p>“So. Where are we headed?” Crowley asked. [2]</p><p>“Home. My home, that is,” Aqzirab replied. The Bentley’s gears shifted with the same smooth sort of rumble Crowley remembered from his own timeline. It was still really weird, not being the one driving. “I keep a lot of old grimoires there, and, well- a few other things which might prove useful.”</p><p>Crowley nodded. That seemed like as good an idea as any.</p><p>“I can’t believe it’s the same bloody car,” he grumbled.</p><p>“You’re not going to get hung up on that, I hope?” Aqzirab asked, not sounding particularly hopeful.</p><p>“Too late, I’ve already been hung,” Crowley replied. He reached for the radio. “Does she still get stuck on Queen in this universe too?”</p><p>Before he could touch the dial, Aqzirab had slapped his hand away from it. “Are you <em>trying</em> to get us noticed by Hell?” he snapped. “The radio stays off.”</p><p>“Alright, alright,” Crowley said, holding up his hands. “Are the chances of- I don’t know, whoever Sandalphon ended up being over here or what have you- tapping into your radio really that high?”</p><p>“Hell shouldn’t be able to get through the wards we placed on it, but we’re doing all sorts of things we shouldn’t be able to do today,” Aqzirab said. “If I wasn’t absolutely certain that my mobile was secure I’d throw it out the window.”</p><p>“That seems a little… extreme,” Crowley said dubiously. He thought about it for a moment. “So, here’s the thing: in my universe, Hell latched on to anything with advertisements- one of ours, advertisements, I did <em>not</em> get enough credit for that- and used it to communicate. And by communicate I mean threaten, order about, and then occasionally just blast the information directly into my brain. Nearly got me discorporated more than once. I’d be driving along and then it’d be all <em>We have an assignment for you, Crowley. Here’s all the information you require.</em> Next thing you know I’m driving into oncoming traffic.”</p><p>“Oh,” Aqzirab said. “No, it was a bit- a bit different, here. Orders tended to come in the form of paperwork, or the occasional unpleasant home visit. All the technology is a form of passive surveillance. It was rather mandatory to have the blessed thing- or some blessed thing- on for the overwhelming majority of the day. I could only ever have it off for six hour blocks because Lord Raffai convinced everyone that I needed to sleep regularly. I smashed basically every kind of electronic communication device I owned, after Armageddon failed to launch- I had to get myself a new mobile of course, afterwards, with a new number. One they didn’t have, and one I could ward against them. And I haven’t turned on the radio in here ever since.” He paused for a moment to perform a complicated maneuver that had them switching between two lanes of traffic seven times in the space of a minute and clearing the stoplight just before it would have turned red. “I’ve been considering just ripping the whole thing out. If the gear shift tries to stick one more time, I just might.”</p><p>“You can’t talk to the Bentley like that!” Crowley protested, shocked. “She’s <em>the Bentley</em>!” [3]</p><p>“I can talk to my car however I please,” Aqzirab snapped. “And I’ll thank you to stop anthropomorphizing it, you insufferable gadfly.”</p><p>There was a pause.</p><p>“My apologies. That’s… something of a reoccurring argument of ours,” Aqzirab said. “Gadreel and myself, I mean.”</p><p>“No, really? I never would have guessed.”</p><p>They were silent for a time. Crowley took a moment to look out the window, see what strange sights this alternate timeline might have for him.</p><p>It was pretty light on the strange, really, as far as London went. There were shops in different places, and streets in different places. There was a Comet store that still seemed to be operating. But mostly it was pretty much the same.</p><p>“Was there a Jesus here?” he asked as they what certainly looked like a pretty normal church.</p><p>“Oh yes,” Aqzirab replied. “Not one of my successes, that one.”</p><p>“No, no. Me neither.”</p><p>“Failed it so completely I actually ended up living with the Mayans for a time.”</p><p>“Really?”</p><p>“I spent a better part of a decade over there, in what’s now Guatemala, until I finally regained enough of a celestial presence for Gadreel to come and find me.”</p><p>“Wait,” Crowley said. “Go back a bit. Just to set the stage: you got the same assignment I did, right? Tempt Rabbi Yeshua of Nazareth so he doesn’t go through with it all and become Jesus Christ?”</p><p>“Yes. I was quite keen on that one, actually,” Aqzirab said. “Martyrdom makes for a very stirring story once all the blood has been washed off and the reliquaries are gilded, but it’s very tiring to witness. If I could prevent another one- particularly one which stood to inspire so many more- I was actually quite eager to do so.”</p><p>“Yeah. I can’t say I liked watching him die either.”</p><p>“Well, I can already tell you that your temptation went better than mine,” Aqzirab said with a wry smile. “I started out by introducing myself, explaining why faith in God wasn’t something that would necessarily be rewarded by way of my own story. Then I pointed out that upon his death all his words would be taken out of context, and, in time, used to justify the building of empires and all the atrocities associated therein. So long as he was alive he could, at least, refute those misrepresentations. I think I almost swayed him with that. And then I suggested that he settle down into a longer-lasting lifestyle, perhaps build a house for himself and that nice woman from Magdala. That proved to be a bridge too far, which I realized when he punted me straight to Kaminaljuyu with enough force to knock just about all the demonic energy from my corporation.”</p><p>“Do you want to hear something funny?” Crowley asked. “I took Jesus to see the Mayans as part of my temptation.” [4]</p><p>“What?”</p><p>“I took one look at the guy and realized that it wasn’t going to work, so I just kind of went through the motions. <em>You’ve been fasting for forty days, how about you make some bread out of these rocks, if you’re really so powerful?</em> You know, that sort of a thing,” Crowley explained. “He had a sense of humor about it, and so for my last attempt I showed him all the kingdoms of the world. We made a trip of it. Picked up some cocoa and things to break his fast with, you know?”</p><p>“The cocoa was a pretty decent silver lining,” Aqzirab admitted. “I was really impatient, to be able to consume that while assigned to Europe with the occasional trips to Africa and Asia. I kept jumping on every expedition that might open that option up again- ended up getting a commendation for the whole triangle trade system through proximity.”</p><p>“Anyway, it played well, when I had to explain my failure to the Lords of Hell,” Crowley continued. “Even they had to admit that someone who wasn’t willing to trade one Hail Satan for the world was going to be pretty much impossible to crack.”</p><p>“Well, I certainly wish I’d have thought of that,” Aqzirab said. “The way things played out here, it looked like I’d failed and then run to another continent entirely. If your father hadn’t stepped in when he had-”</p><p>“My <em>what</em>?” [5]</p><p>“Your father?” Aqzirab said. He didn’t take his eyes off the road but his eyebrows puckered together in confusion. “Lord Raffai? Former Archangel of Healing?”</p><p>“Raphael?”</p><p>“Not over here he isn’t,” Aqzirab reminded him. “But, yes. I do believe that was his name, back in the day.”</p><p>Crowley sat with that for a moment. “Do we talk?” he demanded. “I mean- angel-me and Lord Raffai?”</p><p>“Not so much, these days,” Aqzirab said. “I was their main channel of communication, and as he’s still nominally affiliated with Hell and I am not…” He shrugged.</p><p>“But, before that,” Crowley pressed. “Before Armagedud and everything. We would talk- <em>they</em> would talk?”</p><p>“Not generally face-to-face. Gadreel was more or less permanently on Earth duty, and Lord Raffai is one of the very few demons to retain their skills in healing others, and so he’s more or less permanently stuck in Hell. They met up a handful of times, over the millennia. Mostly, however, I would convey messages for them,” Aqzirab hedged, clearly picking his words very carefully. “It was dead useful, having one of the Lords of Hell in my debt, knowing a very big secret of his. And I’m sure you’re familiar with the benefits of teaming up with an angel. The arrangement worked out quite well for all parties involved, for the duration, at least. Mikka bless it!” That last part was directed at a stoplight they’d just barely missed. Aqzirab huffed angrily, looked at Crowley out of the corner of his eyes, and then did a double take at the expression on his face. “Did you- did you not keep touch, in your timeline?”</p><p>“Ha! No.” Crowley shook his head. “No. We didn’t.”</p><p>Aqzirab looked at him for so long that the light changed and the car behind them honked loudly. Without bothering to look over his shoulder, Aqzirab muttered a curse that caused the offending automobile to immediately start to smoke and backfire.</p><p>“I probably shouldn’t have done that,” Aqzirab muttered as they started moving again.</p><p>“He- Raphael- he didn’t fight with us during the Rebellion or the Revolution or whatever it is we’re calling the First War,” Crowley said after a moment.</p><p>“He didn’t here either,” Aqzirab said, swerving just a little too close to a couple riding a motorbike for their comfort. Karmic retribution for not wearing any helmets, he supposed. Crowley kind of wanted to give them a cheery wave as they passed but he needed both hands to not fall into the dashboard. “Sataniel Fell, and things started getting heated, so he took you and your siblings out to the edge of the universe. He told you that orders had come down from on high to go spin out some galaxies last minute and none of you were any the wiser until the War started up in earnest. It was- a bit difficult to miss the munitions, even from way out there, apparently.”</p><p>“He didn’t fight <em>with us</em>, I mean. He was on your side of things,” Crowley elaborated. [6]</p><p>“Oh,” Aziraphale said. “I’m sorry to hear that.”</p><p>“It’s-” Crowley was in the process of waving the sentiment away when he realized something. “Wait. <em>None</em> of us fought here? None of the Watchers?”</p><p>“No, they didn’t,” Aqzirab said stiffly.</p><p>“So my siblings are still alive in this timeline?” Crowley demanded. “All of them?”</p><p>“Last I checked,” Aqzirab replied. “Did- were you the only survivor, in yours?”</p><p>“Not quite. There were only three of us older kids who survived the War, and one of them got themselves into trouble in Ethiopia with- well. The humans had this whole convoluted story involving nephilim, but the upshot was that Raphael bound them to the bottom of a pit in the Dudael.” Aqzirab made a noise like he wanted to protest, but he didn’t say anything, so Crowley continued. “None of the younger ones I was charged with lived through the War, but I’ve got a few neplings still running around in Hell, I think. No one who would want to talk to me, and from what I know of the few I managed to keep tabs on the feeling is mutual. Same with my sister. Last time I spoke with her one-on-one she stabbed me in the neck.”</p><p>“Gadreel’s not on speaking terms with his siblings, either,” Aqzirab said. “Most of them blamed him for Lord Raffai’s Fall- he took responsibility for the whole Garden debacle. Many of them felt that should have been Gadreel’s job, and those that didn’t still wanted him to grovel about it. They felt like it would keep the peace in their family, and they felt like that was a bigger priority than Gadreel’s point about humanity’s ability to choose being their salvation.” [7]</p><p>“Well, it was,” Crowley said. “In my timeline, at least. Adam grew up so human he was able to choose to never have been anything but, and that put a stop to the Apocalypse.”</p><p>“Adam?” Aqzirab asked.</p><p>“The Antichrist?” Crowley asked.</p><p>“Oh,” Aqzirab said, sounding amused. “Mikka wanted to create someone in her image, so the Antichrist’s parents named her Lilith, here.”</p><p>“Huh. What was Warlock named, then?”</p><p>“Beg pardon?”</p><p>“Uh. There was a kid we confused for the Antichrist for eleven years- child of the American ambassador?” That didn’t necessarily have to have happened, he supposed, but so much else concerning the humans was the same that he felt like it was a strong possibility.</p><p>And he was right. “Oh yes, they named her Tamsyn here. Syn for short, on the advice of the Mikkaic nuns.”</p><p>Crowley nodded. “Were you the nanny, looking after her?”</p><p>“Dear me, no,” Aqzirab said. “Her parents weren’t the sort to hire a male nanny, and every time I try on the female guise I come across as less Mary Poppins and more Miss Trunchbull, and no one was going to hire <em>her</em> even if all the competition did mysteriously blow away. Gadreel took care of that, and I miracled the garden into behaving.”</p><p>“Yeah, that’s how we split it up in my timeline,” Crowley said. “Which was tough, it really was. I don’t know how you did it, but Aziraphale is absolutely terrible with plants.”</p><p>“Are you good with plants?” Aqzirab asked.</p><p>Crowley shrugged. “I’ve kept some house plants around since the seventies or so. They make a good sounding board.”</p><p>“Huh,” Aqzirab said.</p><p>“Angel-me doesn’t do that, I take it?” Crowley asked.</p><p>“Not particularly. He <em>paints</em> plants, sometimes, but they aren’t generally his.”</p><p>“He paints?”</p><p>“Yes. He has a little starving artist’s studio set up for it,” Aqzirab said. “He used to sculpt, too. He was extremely good at it, but he stopped not long after the Renaissance. I’m not sure why.”</p><p>“Enh,” Crowley said, with a sudden, terrible suspicion of what Gadreel had sculpted. [8]</p><p>“If I may ask,” Aqzirab said, making a hard turn right over three lanes of traffic. “How did you deal with the Devil checking up on her- erm, his- progeny?”</p><p>“Same as I dealt with him checking up on me,” Crowley said. “Every so often his voice would come through the radio or the television or whatever and he’d be all <em>Oh darling, how is the Beast coming along</em> and I’d tell him that he was absolutely irredeemable. It didn’t happen too often. Why, was Mikka more involved?”</p><p>“She kept wanting to give her presents. Knives and other things utterly unsuitable for children, even if said child is the spawn of Hell,” Aqzirab said absently. His face was doing that thing Aziraphale’s face did when he was having more emotions than he could tidily deal with. “I’m sorry, did you just say that the Devil called you <em>darling</em>?”</p><p>“Yes?”</p><p>“The Devil- who is Lucifer Morningstar, in your timeline, and known as Archangel Sataniel the High General of Heaven’s Armies in this one, and Light-bringer in both.”</p><p>“Yessss?”</p><p>“He calls you darling?”</p><p>“Well I doubt he’d do it now,” Crowley said.</p><p>Aqzirab’s face kept doing the thing for a while, before he seemed to decide that irritation was the best emotion to have. “Mikka,” he said, clucking his tongue. “You’re such a teacher’s pet!”</p><p>“Excuse me?!”</p><p>Aqzirab made another way too sharp turn, which doubled as a surprisingly neat parallel parking job alongside the curb. Crowley was beginning to understand why Aziraphale would clutch at anything remotely stable when he drove the Bentley around at two or three times the speed limit, and he did not appreciate that understanding in the slightest.</p><p>“Well, this is us,” Aqzirab said, already opening the door even as he engaged the parking brake. “Let’s keep that wiggle on, shall we?”</p><p>“How the fuck did you survive Hell and retain the ability to say things like that with a straight face,” Crowley grumbled. Aqzirab did not deign to respond.</p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>[1] “Is the Bentley parked around here?”<br/>
“I would imagine not. It’s probably somewhere around Crowley’s place, if he wasn’t out and about when you two switched. Oh, I do hope he wasn’t driving when it happened.”<br/>
“The Bentley’s my car over here?”<br/>
“Is she not-”<br/>
“No! No she is not. Aqzirab drives, and he’s very tetchy about it.”</p><p>[2] “So where are we going?”<br/>
“Somewhere that should be safe, or so I hope. Crowley lives in a flat in Mayfair. We should be safe to regroup there.”</p><p>[3] “Yeah, sorry, I’ve got just one more question: why didn't you fight him?”<br/>
“What?”<br/>
“Gabriel. Back in the shop. Why didn’t you fight him?”<br/>
“Oh, well. I don’t like violence-”<br/>
“Ha!” Gadreel said, before he could fully think his interruption through.<br/>
Aziraphale straightened his bowtie nervously. “I suppose- well, I suppose your Aqzirab doesn’t dislike it, then.”<br/>
“I… wouldn’t say that,” Gadreel replied. “Actually, I’m pretty sure he hates it. He does a good line in threats and general menace but I’ve never seen him strike the first blow basically ever. But you didn’t hear that from me and I don’t recommend telling him that either.”<br/>
“Oh, I see,” Aziraphale said. His nervous fiddling didn’t cease. “At any rate, he’s an Archangel with a capital A, and I’m a Principality. I don’t think a fight would end in my favor.”<br/>
“That’s fair.” A Principality? That was a bit lower down that he would have guessed.</p><p>[4] They’d sensed an angelic presence on their trail after the building was in sight. Aziraphale pointed it out to him in a whisper, and then steered them away from it, sticking to the crowded main streets and then, eventually, an even more crowded Chinese restaurant. He recommended the baby squid rolls. Gadreel wasn’t sure why this surprised him, but it did.</p><p>[5]“Do you mind if I ask you a question?” Aziraphale asked, as he finished the last of the baby squid rolls.<br/>
“Reckon it’s only fair at this point,” Gadreel said, still quietly reeling from the fact that eating like that wasn’t a demonic trait after all.<br/>
“If someone were to describe you as nice, what would you say?”<br/>
That wasn’t exactly the question Gadreel had been expecting. He gave Aziraphale a curious look, and then eventually shrugged and said “Well, I try to be?”<br/>
Aziraphale smiled. Aziraphale smiled a lot, actually, it was really a lot, seeing him smile without having it be more of a smirk.<br/>
“Why do you ask?”<br/>
“Well, it’s a bit of a sticking point with Crowley, being nice, or kind, or good, in much the same way it seems not being inclined towards violence is a sticking point for your Aqzirab.”<br/>
“Oh, does he get all grumbly about it?”<br/>
“Oh my word, yes,” Aziraphale said, before dropping his voice down half an octave and growling out “<i>I’m not nice, nice is a four letter word.</i>”<br/>
“Does my voice sound like that?” Gadreel demanded, shocked.<br/>
“Oh, erm. Not precisely,” Aziraphale said, before admitting. “I’m actually quite rubbish at impressions.”<br/>
Gadreel snorted. “That- you want to hear something absolutely bonkers? Whenever Aqzirab does impressions, they’re uncanny.”<br/>
“Really?” Aziraphale asked. “My, I wonder what caused that.”</p><p>[6] “He’s called Xhandor, in my timeline,” Gadreel said, watching the Archangel Sandalphon wander around aimlessly in front of the restaurant. “He almost discorporated me once, right before Gomorrah went to shit.” And then Aqzirab had killed him- not discorporated, but actually killed- during the lead up to the Apocalypse.<br/>
“He was there in my timeline too, doing the smiting,” Aziraphale confirmed grimly. “He’s another one I wouldn’t wish to tangle with.”<br/>
“Yeah, but we’re not going to be able to stay here all day without using a miracle, and if we use a miracle he’ll be able to pinpoint us exactly.”<br/>
“If we don’t do something soon, I fear he might become impatient and begin tearing through the buildings in search of us. I can have a word with Zhang Wei, and get us out the back door, but I don’t think that will necessarily impede Sandalphon.”<br/>
“I could try a trick,” Gadreel offered. “But I can’t guarantee that it will work.”</p><p>[7] Gadreel pressed the miracle, currently more potential than actualization, between his hands, rolling it up into a little ball. Sandalphon could sense something. He was looking into the restaurant, Gadreel could see him in the reflection in the mirror above their booth. He took a deep breath and <i>pushed</i>. The miracle went rocketing out until it hit a fire hydrant a good two blocks away and knocked it open. Sandalphon hesitated, and then he turned around and headed off in its direction.<br/>
“Good work,” Aziraphale said as he got up. “Now, I’ll go and have that word with Zhang Wei.”</p><p>[8] “Holy mother of fuck,” Gadreel said as they entered Crowley’s flat. It was very empty- almost Heavenly, but dimly lit. “Is he okay?”<br/>
“Yes?” Aziraphale sounded confused.<br/>
Gadreel felt his eyes go very wide. There along the wall was the Shame Statue. Crowley had kept the fucking Shame Statue. “If you say so,” he squeaked.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>No matter how I tweaked them or how many times the end notes told me I had characters remaining, I could not actually get them to fit here. :(</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Chapter 5</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Crowley half-expected that Aqzirab would live in some moldering old Victorian-style mansion, but the area they’d pulled up in looked like warehouses, warehouses, and more warehouses. He wasn’t too sure that there were living spaces here, and he said as much.</p><p>Aqzirab shrugged. “Originally I just wanted to move my books to somewhere Hell didn’t know about, but I have to admit, the lack of neighbors has grown on me and I’m in no rush to move again.”</p><p>That made perfect sense, actually. What made less sense was Aqzirab’s method of getting inside his house.</p><p>“I normally miracle the door open,” Aqzirab said. He clearly thought he was explaining why they were avoiding the main entrance to the complex and were instead headed for a padlocked fence, but he really wasn’t doing that at all. “But I have to assume that Hell is in on this somehow, and I don’t want them to be able to track where we are, so no more miracles from me for the time being.”</p><p>“I could do it,” Crowley offered. “I’m from an alternate universe, what are the chances that anyone here is keeping track of my miracles?”</p><p>“Not zero, and until we know more I’d just as soon as use the backdoor I left for myself,” Aqzirab said. He ignored the padlock entirely, and began to scale the fence.</p><p>“This is you leaving a backdoor for yourself?” Crowley asked.</p><p>“This is the start of my getting to the backdoor,” said Aqzirab, not even bothering to sound strained. “Hang tight, I’ll be back in a jiffy.” [1]</p><p>“<i>Hang tight, I’ll be back in a</i>-” Crowley began mockingly, and then stopped as Aqzirab took off running along the top of the fence, and made a great leap to the nearest windowsill. He barely paused to gain his footing before jumping to the next one.</p><p>“-jiffy. Huh.” Well, so long as they were only vaguely pretending to be human…</p><p>By the time Aqzirab returned, having retrieved a physical copy of his key from the rooftop, Crowley hadn’t transformed into a snake, but he had contorted his body in such a way as to cause a normal human to wince, vomit, and/or call for an ambulance. Aqzirab merely watched as he finished slithering through the little gap in the fence left by the slack in the chain, one eyebrow raised.</p><p>“You know, until just this morning I really thought that you might be some kind of magpie?” he remarked, as Crowley popped his joints back into a human shape.</p><p>“And I really thought you might be some kind of dove,” Crowley replied. He hesitated for a moment, and then he smirked. “Would you like to laugh about how wrong we were?” [2]</p><p>“I am a bit curious to see if I’ve guessed correctly, I admit,” Aqzirab said.</p><p>Crowley grinned and swept his glasses off with a hiss of laughter, letting his tongue dart out, thin and forked. Aqzirab blinked, and then let out an unholy bleat of a laugh before removing the glasses from the top of his head. His hair parted and fell down his face slightly, revealing two short and stubby horns.</p><p>“Ram? Goat?” Crowley asked.</p><p>“North American mountain goat is closest,” Aqzirab said. “You?”</p><p>“Red-bellied black snake,” Crowley replied. “Not a very creative name, but it fits. They’re from Australia.”</p><p>“So we both confused the early Europeans.”</p><p>“The early Europeans were confused by <i>bears</i>! Like, actual indigenous to the area bears,” Crowley scoffed. “They wouldn’t even say the proper name for the thing, like, the word bear comes from the word everyone said instead of bear.”</p><p>“Rather like Yahweh, in that respect,” Aqzirab noted.</p><p>“Bleeding <i>ineffable</i>,” Crowley agreed with a snort.</p><p>They strolled through the wide streets, silent aside from slow drizzle of rain pattering on the cheaply made rooftops and the asphalt below their feet. There was no one around, and Crowley tried to take comfort in the fact that if someone came for them, it would be impossible to miss.</p><p>“This is me,” Aqzirab said, indicating a small doorway. He jammed the key into a small box next to the door, and then punched a string of numbers into the keypad it revealed. “Shall we?”</p><p>The door opened, and Crowley nearly laughed. It opened into a foyer, opulently decorated in a baroque style. “Now <i>this</i> is more like where I expect you to live,” he said. He craned his neck back, and found that the ceiling didn’t disappoint: the Bosch-like quadratura fit in surprisingly well with all the gilded carvings of imps and gargoyles.</p><p>“I’m not going to live in some brutalist minimalist space just because my residence is located in an industrial sector,” Aqzirab chided. “Really Crowley, I have <i>standards</i>.”</p><p>Crowley did laugh at that. “You totally got arrested during the Reign of Terror over here too, didn’t you?”</p><p>“My angelic counterpart went to France during the Reign of Terror?” Aqzirab asked incredulously. “Whatever for?”</p><p>“Crêpes. Apparently, you could only get the good ones in Paris.”</p><p>“If you say so,” Aqzirab said, sounding amused. “The main floor of the library is through here.”[3]</p><p>To the surprise of literally no one, the library looked more like Aziraphale’s bookshop than Aqzirab’s bookshop had, piled high with old, old books and odd bits and bobs that went along with them. Some of the furniture was the same even: the long green settee Crowley had spent so many nights crashing on, the maroon wingback chair Aziraphale would spend literal days in reading, the tansu chest that held his records, and the climate controlled cabinets for the scrolls and parchment that he’d carried with him for centuries before giving in to the inevitable and opening the shop. It had almost the same scent, even. Crowley took a moment to breathe it in as Aqzirab went around switching on the lights. The effect was so complete that some part of him was surprised to turn and find Aqzirab dressed in chestnut brown rather than cream beige.</p><p>“So. I suppose now we have to get started,” he said. He regarded his library critically, his hands clasped behind his back. He wasn’t fidgeting. It was really weird to see him so obviously stressed and not fidgeting. “Any ideas?”</p><p>“I don’t suppose you’ve got anything there on how to reverse the polarity of the holiness flow?” Crowley suggested.</p><p>“We are <i>not</i> calling it that,” Aqzirab said shortly.</p><p>“Liminal spaces, then. The crossing of thresholds or sacred boundaries or whatever it is that sounds good to you,” Crowley said. “And you know, multiple universes, I guess. Might as well throw time travel in there too.”</p><p>That sparked something. “Predestination,” Aqzirab said, already headed deeper into the shelves. “Theological fatalism and the paradox of free will.”</p><p>“Can you walk that leap of logic back for me?” Crowley asked.</p><p>“What was our first reaction, when we realized how far back our timelines had diverged?” Aqzirab asked.</p><p>“That our worlds weren’t as different as they should be?” Crowley asked.</p><p>“No, the other one!” Aqzirab shouted.</p><p>“That we both felt like our sides had been fated to lose the First War,” Crowley said.</p><p>“Yes, exactly!” Aqzirab emerged, carrying several books. He set them down on the coffee table in front of the settee, and immediately disappeared again. “Now, I’m sure some of that has to do with the propaganda, that old one-two punch of ‘well, we were meant to lose this one but next time we’ll seize the thrones of Heaven back and reclaim our rightful places in creation’ or what have you…”</p><p>“I think my lot was just planning to burn Heaven down,” Crowley said.</p><p>“Or what have you,” Aqzirab repeated dismissively. “That’s not the point- the point is, what if that gut instinct of ours wasn’t wholly wrong?”</p><p>“So we were both fated to lose in our own timelines?” Crowley asked, with no small amount of unease. This was getting too close to the Ineffable Plan for his liking.</p><p>“Yes? No? Something in between?” Aqzirab said, reappearing with another stack of books. “Something changed, between our universes. Something that created the conditions for a Loyalist victory in your universe and was inverted to create the conditions for a Rebel victory in mine.”</p><p>“Like what, God?”</p><p>Aqzirab turned sharply on his heel to glare at him.</p><p>“We do <i>not</i> have to bring Her into this,” he said coolly. “We’re both beings of free will, from peoples of free will.”</p><p>“You’ll get no argument from me about that,” Crowley said placatingly, which seemed to wrong foot Aqzirab a bit. “But if God in this timeline is different from God in my timeline than I think that might have an effect on things.”</p><p>“Yes,” Aqzirab said, after a moment. “That is a fair point.” He disappeared once more.</p><p>Crowley poked at the books on the coffee table.  An annotated English translation of <i>The Book of Invasions</i>. Leadbeater’s <i>Clairvoyance</i>. Some of it was in Spanish- Luis de Molina’s work.</p><p><i>Satan, we had no almost no effect on them at all,</i> Crowley realized. <i>Look at them, writing all the same books and everything.</i></p><p>“Do you have that argument a lot?” Crowley asked. “About free will?”</p><p>“Not precisely. We’re more or less in agreement that we have it and it’s ultimately for the best,” Aqzirab said, his voice floating down from somewhere halfway up the farthest wall. “We just inevitably end up arguing about how we do and do not use it. Gadreel doesn’t understand why I didn’t simply refuse to fight in the War, and I don’t understand why he kept defending his family even after they turned against him.”</p><p>“We don’t talk about the War, Aziraphale and I,” Crowley said.</p><p>“That’s probably a good idea. It’s a contentious subject between us even though Gadreel didn’t fight,” Aqzirab said. After a moment he added “Does that mean that you do argue over having free will with my angelic counterpart?”</p><p>“Not precisely,” Crowley said. “Mostly we argue over whether everything has to be part of that Ineffable Plan of Hers, and if that plan has to be good.”</p><p>“Ha!” Aqzirab said mirthlessly. “Oh, I bet I’m <i>insufferable</i> about that.”</p><p>“Well,” Crowley said.</p><p>“No, no, I was the idiot who walked into a gathering of angry angels because I’d heard the voice of God and thought that meant that everything was going to turn out well for me,” Aqzirab said, appearing with another stack of  books. “I’m sure without that moment I remained that idiot.”</p><p>Crowley wouldn’t put it exactly like that- not on most days. Especially now that Aziraphale had come around to the idea that Heaven’s idea of the Ineffable Plan was just that- an idea, not a revelation, not an edict. But before he could try to articulate that, he noticed the topmost book on the stack Aqzirab had gathered, and snatched it up.</p><p>“Do you recognize that one?” Aqzirab asked.</p><p>“So far I recognize all of them,” Crowley said absently. “But this one- <i>Sefer Milhamot Ha-Shem</i>? I just got this one. I’m giving it to Aziraphale as a gift for the third anniversary of the world not ending.”</p><p>“Well, I hate that,” Aqzirab said, frowning down at the book. “But I suppose we should get started somewhere if we want to figure out why you and Gadreel were switched, and Gersonides does discuss prophecy…”[4]</p><p>His voice trailed off, and Crowley felt the hair on the back of his neck rise a second before the library was plunged into darkness.</p><p>“Fuck,” Aqzirab swore under his breath.</p><p>It was a demon, and a powerful one too, Crowley could sense it, the cloying corruption and itching compulsion to prostrate himself before someone more powerful than he could ever hope tp be before they could demand it from it. Then Crowley could see her, illuminated by the only light in the room, coming from the lightning bugs that seemed to be fused into her skin. She was the Archangel Uriel in his timeline, and probably had been the Archangel Uriel at some point in this one, a long time ago.</p><p>“Why Duke Araph, what a surprise,” Aqzirab said, all saccharine sweetness. “If I’d known you were coming I would have set something out to decant. Perhaps I’d even broken out the nightshade.”</p><p>“Traitor,” Araph said coolly. [5]</p><p>“That’s me,” Aqzirab agreed. Crowley’s eyes had adjusted to the lack of light by now, and he saw Aqzirab reach behind his back for the sword. “I don’t suppose you have a better explanation for the switching of Gadreel and Crowley than your Heavenly compatriots?”</p><p>“The Watcher Gadreel was to Fall. We would have him, and by extension, you,” Araph said.</p><p>“Yes, but that doesn’t explain the multiple universe conundrum we’re currently experiencing,” Aqzirab pointed out. “I know that they’re a bit more lax about their paperwork Upstairs unless Amaqiel is the one doing the filing, but this seems a bit drastic for a bit of misfiled paperwork.”</p><p>Araph didn’t deign to respond. She merely drew a sword of her own.</p><p>“Aqzirab, why don’t you let me handle this?” Crowley interrupted. Both Araph and Aqzirab turned to him. “You’re the one who knows where everything is in this universe.” <i>And anything you might have hidden here that could defeat a Duke of Hell is something only you can get.</i></p><p>“Yes, I am,” Aqzirab said, nodding slowly. “You can hold your own?”</p><p>Crowley pulled out the spear he’d gotten from Zebuleon. It was glowing faintly, not something he’d noticed about it when he’d picked it up in the bookshop. Araph’s eyes widened as she saw it.</p><p>“I can hold my own,” Crowley agreed, and Aqzirab melted away, hopefully gone in search of something that could definitively end the fight in their favor.</p><p>“You shouldn’t be able to wield that,” Araph said.</p><p>“Yeah, but today’s been a really fun day for doing things that aren’t possible,” Crowley told her, and then lunged while he something like the element of surprise. [6]</p><p>Crowley had trained with a spear, a long time ago. Well, he said trained- it was more like some two hundred odd kids all going at one another on the playground before recess ended and everyone piled back inside to learn about the formation of quasars. It wasn’t why he was created- it was just something that all angels were supposed to do.</p><p>Uriel- Araph- was much the same way. She was, first and foremost, the scroll-keeper, the record-maker. She didn’t become the Flame of God until after the Fall, and the Fall had gone very differently over here. Even without that, he was willing to bet that she hadn’t had half the chance to learn all the dirty tricks humans had come up with for fighting, or a fifth of the imagination required to put them into practice.</p><p>Crowley did, and more importantly, he wasn’t going to get all distracted by the <i>weirdness</i> of Araph the way he’d been distracted by the weirdness of Yakiynton and Ra’ahael. He’d never known Uriel particularly well, never had to answer to her, never really lived in any particular fear of her, the way he had with Ligur and Hastur.</p><p>So it was pretty easy to come up with a battle plan, comparatively speaking. First, stick to the basic moves, at least at first, the stuff that had been drilled into his head so many eons ago that the concept of eons hadn’t yet been invented. The stuff Araph would know too, and would know how to combat. Second, let himself get backed into a narrow space. Simple tactic, that: she had a sword which had a shorter range than his spear, so enclosed space would give her the advantage. Third, get creative, and strike quickly.</p><p>That was where the plan fell apart. Because it worked, up until he collapsed the spear back into it’s pocket-sized shape and then sprang it back open in order to drive it into her thigh, and Araph didn’t react like a demon who had been struck with a holy weapon. She reacted like a Duke of Hell who had been struck with an entirely mortal instrument. She was injured, but it wasn’t anything more than an inconvenience.  </p><p>“I should have known that this would be one of your tricks,” she said, healing the wound with a shiver. [7]</p><p>“No tricks, just a great deal of confusion,” Crowley said honestly. He didn’t get much farther than that, because he didn’t have to: Aqzirab had returned, and thrown a bucket of water over Araph. Araph turned on him, which gave Crowley the chance to aim his spear a little better, driving it into the side of her neck and discorporating her.</p><p>“That was meant to be holy water,” Aqzirab said. He was dressed in a heavy smock with gloves and a welding mask, which he tossed off himself with an angry huff.</p><p>“Yeah, and this is meant to be a holy weapon!” Crowley said. “And it’s not!”</p><p>“What do you mean, of course it’s a holy weapon!” Aqzirab had stripped off the gloves now, and was untying the smock with heavy irritation. “It’s glowing and everything.”</p><p>“Yeah, but Araph didn’t react to it like it was a holy weapon!” Crowley said.</p><p>Aqzirab snorted, and then with an air of exaggerated indulgence, walked over to his and pressed the tip of his pinky finger to the head of the spear. When it failed to so much as sting, he frowned down at it, and tugged it out of Crowley’s hands.</p><p>“This shouldn’t be happening,” he said.</p><p>“No kidding,” Crowley said. “This isn’t- I thought it, the whole demon trap working on the Archangels thing was because our timelines seemed to be opposite of one another. Like, having our sides reversed made what was holy in my timeline switched around to being unholy in this one along with the people. But this isn’t reversed. It’s <i>neutralized</i>.”</p><p>“It isn’t- it isn’t <i>catching</i>, do you think?” Aqzirab asked, dropping the weapon to the floor between them.</p><p>“How the fuck should I know?” Crowley cried, throwing his hands up in the air.</p><p>The lights in the library came on. Crowley attributed it to Araph having fully disappeared- and sure enough a quick look at the floor revealed that her corporation had been returned to Hell, leaving no trace behind- but then the lights began to grow brighter.</p><p>“What’s-” Crowley began, but the question died in his throat. The answer had materialized in the air above them, burning so brightly that his eyes watered.</p><p>He’d forgotten that- how sometime Lucifer would get so caught up in something, grow so enthused by some idea or another, that he would start glowing, letting that divinity that God had concentrated so strongly within him out. He’d forgotten that he could do it at will too, when he was angry enough.</p><p>And right now, Lucifer was extremely fucking pissed off.</p><p>“Oh no,” Crowley said, reaching for Aqzirab. He didn’t quite manage to grasp his hand before the room went from being bright to being blindingly white, and it swallowed him whole. [8]</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>[1] “So, what was the plan from here again?” Gadreel asked.<br/>“We regroup,” Aziraphale said. “We’re relatively safe here. We should have a minute to figure out what our next move is.”<br/>“Right,” Gadreel said. “So. Let’s see what we have to work with here.”</p><p>[2] What did a demon have a lectern for anyway? Why did his top-of-the-line sound system have no speakers? Where was this television meant to be plugged in? The fucking Shame Statue was taunting him.<br/>At least Crowley had a really good collection of wine.</p><p>[3] Crowley also had a throne. Gadreel could kind of see the appeal of it, four glasses in. It was a good lounging chair. Very dramatic.<br/>“And so Aqzirab looks at me and he says, completely deadpan <i>We’re in a country with a long history of good food and a much more recent but not unremarkable history of legal sodomy. Why do you think I’m over here dressed like this?</i> And, like, what am I supposed to say to <i>that</i>?”<br/>“Good Lord,” Aziraphale said, his face flaming. “I’m glad no one put that together over here.”<br/>Gadreel laughed so hard he nearly fell off the throne.</p><p>[4] “Oh, that’s odd,” Aziraphale said as Gadreel pulled an old looking book out from the sparsely-populated bookcase. “Crowley has spent the last eighty years or so claiming that he can’t read.”<br/>“Drives you up the wall, doesn’t it?” Gadreel said sympathetically, inspecting the book. “Oh, did you have a Levi ben Gerson over here, too? I liked him, he was a thinker…” His voice trailed off as he remembered the sort of things Levi had liked to think about.<br/>“Gadreel?” Aziraphale asked.<br/>“Hang tight,” Gadreel said as he forced the alcohol out of his bloodstream and back into the bottle. “I’m going to sober you up, and then I’ve got a theory I need to bounce off of you.”</p><p>[5] “It’s like this,” Gadreel said. “Did they come up with the cat abuse thing over here?”<br/>“You’re not being as clear as you seem to think you’re being,” Aziraphale told him.<br/>“The whole, you stick a cat in a box with some poison, and you close the box, and from there on the cat is functionally both alive and dead because you don’t know until the box is opened again whether or not it ate the poison. That thing.”<br/>“Yes. Though that theory belonged to a man called Schrodinger, not Gerosnides.”<br/>“But! But, thing is. Most people look at that and think that there is one right answer. The cat is either alive or its dead, it’s just the knowledge of such that we don’t have and therefore can’t work with. But God is omniscient. So She would know whether the box is open or not.”<br/>“I’m with you so far,” Aziraphale said cautiously.<br/>“But Levi wouldn’t think that. He wouldn’t. His whole thing was that God had self-imposed limits on Her omniscience. She knows what choices we have-”<br/>“-but not what choices we will make,” Aziraphale finished.</p><p>[6] “If I’m following you correctly, what you’re saying is that both our timelines are essentially in the same box,” Aziraphale said. “The cat is dead and the cat is alive; the Loyalists won and the Rebels won.”<br/>“And God’s watching it all play out,” Gadreel added.<br/>“So are you saying that this is all divinely mandated?”<br/>“No. Or, at least, not wholly.” Gadreel paused. “Or, well-”<br/>“You needn’t turn it into a pun,” Aziraphale said quickly.</p><p>[7] “<i>If</i> this is not God’s idea- and I like to think that if She was going to send us between different universes She’d at least send a burning bush or something- then that means that there has to be some kind of mechanism somewhere that someone else can use.”<br/>“Heaven,” Aziraphale said. “It would have to be in Heaven.”</p><p>[8] “So that’s the how of it, basically,” Gadreel said, pacing back and forth. “But what I don’t understand is why. Why would they bring me here? Why would they take Crowley? What do they want out of all of this?”<br/>“I think, Gadreel,” Aziraphale said slowly. “That we should take a moment to discuss Armageddon, and what happened after that.”</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. Chapter 6</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“Hey. You. Wake the fuck up.”</p><p>Crowley groaned and rolled over on his back. He glared blearily up at the face looming above him, and got an impression of pale purple eyes and square jaw.</p><p>“Ugh, Gabriel?” He cast his mind back, trying to figure out what had happened that involved the Archangel fucking Gabriel. He blinked, and his vision solidified, revealing a very Gabriel-<i>like</i> face, infested with patches of pale purple scale and a gecko.</p><p>Crowley blinked again. The gecko licked not-Gabriel’s eyeball, and everything came crashing back down on him all at once.</p><p>“Jesus Christ,” he swore, scrambling back.</p><p>“Your first guess was closer,” said Aziraphale.</p><p>No, Crowley remembered, he wasn’t Aziraphale any more than the demon standing above him was Gabriel. Alternate timelines, and all that. [1]</p><p>Crowley hit a wall behind him, and used it to get enough leverage to stand. He felt off- off-kilter, off-balance- but he was pretty sure he wasn’t injured in any way that couldn’t be fixed with a few well-placed miracles. Presuming he could do miracles, which right now he could not.</p><p>“You’re sure this is not your guy, Z?” Not-Gabriel said. Ghalittor, that was the name Aqzirab had told him. This was Ghalittor, the Prince of Hell. “He doesn’t look like he’s spent six thousand years in the service of Hell.”</p><p>“Thanks,” Crowley said. “I exfoliate.”</p><p>They were in a cell, Crowley realized abruptly. Some kind of little nave with a portcullis for an entrance. Aqzirab was not in sight, not from the back of the cell, at least. Zebuleon was, coming in to stand next to Ghalittor, not a hair out of place in their bun.</p><p>“Reasonably certain,” Zebuleon said, looking him up and down. “As is Sataniel. We can get one of his siblings in to confirm it, if you’d prefer their word to ours.”</p><p>“More angels?” Ghalittor scoffed. “No thanks.”[2]</p><p>Still out of sight, Aqzirab muttered something. Ghalittor turned his head to him, his neck turning stiffly, more like a doll than a person. “Shut up. We’re still figuring out what we’re doing to do with you, you insubordinate little shit.”</p><p>“I can hardly wait to find out, sir,” Aqzirab replied. Crowley had to admit, he’d never quite heard ‘sir’ so clearly stand for ‘bite me’ before.</p><p>Ghalittor let out a wordless snarl and stalked out of the cell.</p><p>“What are you doing?” Crowley asked. There was the sound of someone being struck, and a muted grunt of pain. “Oi! Get your hands off him!”</p><p>He tried to rush past Zebuleon, but they caught him by the collar and threw him back. He hissed, his fangs elongating, which was how he realized that while he couldn’t perform miracles, he could shift his form.</p><p>He didn’t like going full snake. He’d been stuck in that one form for a long time after the Fall, and now every time he did shift there was a little niggling voice in the back of his head on a constant loop of <i>what if it happens again, what if it happens again, what if it happens again and this time it never ends</i> and he could really do without that.</p><p>But, sometimes, he just had to bite the bullet and snake out. Like now, for instance.</p><p>Zebuleon’s eyes went wide as he transformed, and they took a step back. They didn’t transform themselves, though: it probably wasn’t considered a properly angelic thing to do, transforming into a cloud of flies. It wouldn’t have been in his timeline, at least. That worked out in his favor. It was really hard to take a bite out of cloud of flies; a human-shaped being, on the other hand, was the perfect size to take a bite out of.</p><p>He coiled himself up and then struck, missing Zebuleon by inches as they quickly side-stepped them. He caught sight of Aqzirab then, straightening himself out as Ghalittor turned towards Crowley and Zebuleon. His eyes narrowed for a moment, and then, just as Crowley turned back to the Archangel, he began to transform.</p><p>Crowley didn’t get that chance to see him complete the sequence. As he tried to strike out at Zebuleon once more, they suddenly remembered that they were able to perform miracles, and sent him back into the cell, slamming him against the far wall once more. Before he could shake it off, they snapped, and the portcullis descended. A second later he heard another slam down- the one at the entrance to Aqzirab’s cell, he would guess.</p><p>He transformed back into a man shape, to make it obvious that he was glaring.</p><p>“Perhaps we should move this to one of the conference rooms,” Zebuleon suggested.</p><p>“Might as well,” Ghalittor agreed. “We’ll be back when we figure out what we’re doing with you.”[2]</p><p>Aqzirab let out an angry sounding bleat. Crowley flipped them off, and a moment later there was the sound of a door closing as they left what was presumably this version of Heaven’s version of prison.</p><p>Crowley leaned against the portcullis. If he wedged himself over by the left wall he could see the right side of Aqzirab’s cell when he was, still in mountain goat form.</p><p>“Are you okay?” he asked.</p><p>Aqzirab snorted, and then, over the course of several minutes, turned back in a man shaped being. He let out a pained sounding groan as his feet pushed themselves out of hooves and into shoes. “You’re quick,” Aqzirab said, sounding annoyed.</p><p>“Thanks?” Crowley tried, before repeating “Are you okay?”</p><p>“I’m a demon from Hell, darling,” Aqzirab said tiredly. “I’ve had worse trying to reach the filing office before the quarterly deadline hits.”</p><p>“Yeah, same here,” Crowley reminded him. “Are you okay?”</p><p>“Oh don’t fuss you miserable gadfly, you,” Aqzirab snapped. Then he sighed. “You know what the strangest part of all this is?”</p><p>“There’s a pretty long list of contenders,” Crowley pointed out.</p><p>Aqzirab snorted. “You’re very much like him, you know. You and Gadreel must have had very different lives, but you’re still very much the same, at the core.”[3]</p><p>“You and Aziraphale aren’t so far apart either,” Crowley said. “I mean, you’ve got the same taste in books and everything.”</p><p>“He’s got a taste for heretical philosophy, pagan theology, and occult prophecies?” Aqzirab asked.</p><p>“Pretty much,” Crowley said. “Books of prophecy are a speciality of his. And he’s got this nice little collection of misprint Bibles- you know, <i>Thou shalt commit adultery</i> and <i>Buggre alle this for a larke</i>.”</p><p>Aqzirab chuckled. “You know, I’ve always enjoyed that one.”</p><p>Crowley smirked, and then something occurred to him. “Wait. You have the same misprints over here?” he asked.</p><p>“Yes?” Aqzirab said, looking confused. Then his expression sharpened. “The same misprints. In the same books.”</p><p>“If I were to ask you how the Flood went down, or, or-” Crowley tried to figure which nasty business to bring up next.</p><p>“- Sodom and Gomorrah-” Aqzirab supplied.</p><p>“- right, or the Death of the Firstborn in Egypt,” Crowley said. He didn’t need to ask. The answer was written plainly on Aqzirab’s face. “No wonder humanity is so similar in our timelines. No matter which side won, Heaven pulled the <i>exact same shit</i> on them!”</p><p>“I don’t know why I’m surprised,” Aqzirab groaned.</p><p>“Well I’m shocked,” Crowley spluttered. “What was the point in rebelling if we were only ever going to follow the same ‘Great’ Plan if we won!”</p><p>“Maybe there’s some kind of difference that we’re missing?” Aqzirab suggested. “I mean- the Death of the Firstborn. That was the last of ten plagues visited upon Egypt for failing to release the Hebrews from slavery, yes?”</p><p>“Yeah,” Crowley said. “It was blood, frogs, lice, flies, various livestock diseases, boils, flaming hail, locusts, and darkness first. Then came the Death of the Firstborn.”</p><p>Aqzirab nodded. “That happened here as well.” He paused, and then added. “Did you and my angelic counterpart start working together after that?”</p><p>“Satan, no,” Crowley said, almost laughing. “We’d been… not exactly working together, but we coordinated. He tried to keep things bearable in the slave quarters, and I encouraged people to run away when that failed. You know, <i>go on, run off into the wilderness, they can’t tell you what to do out there</i>. I told Downstairs that was thwarting, since clearly God intended them to all just suffer in Egypt.”</p><p>Aqzirab winced. “Ah. And then Moses returned and demanded that his people be allowed to go into the wilderness to worship Her properly.”</p><p>“Yep. That did not play well Downstairs, let me you,” Crowley said.</p><p>“I can imagine,” Aqzirab said. “Did- did my angelic counterpart know that was going to happen?”</p><p>“He didn’t. Not that I believed him at the time,” Crowley said. “And thus began our worst fight ever, and we’ve had some <i>really</i> bad ones since we made up from that one. By the time Samael came around with the Death of Firstborn… well. We were almost enemies for a good seven hundred years after that. We nearly discorporated one another a few times and everything. I just- I don’t do well with dead kids.”</p><p>“No, nor does Gadreel,” Aqzirab said. “Neither do I, really, I just- I get it. Following bad orders, not sticking your neck out no matter what horrid thing is going on, for fear of the consequences. I think he just needed someone to tell him that he was more than that. Even if that someone was me, though I don’t know why.”</p><p>Crowley looked at him for a moment, and then a moment more. He looked very much like Aziraphale, in those moments, even with the dark suit, the brown eyes, and the oddly straight hair.</p><p>Then, suddenly, Aqzirab smirked. “Ah. You too?”</p><p>Crowley really, really wished he didn’t know what he was talking about. “If you know enough to say that, then you have to know that the reason why is that he’s in love with you.”</p><p>“Of course he is,” Aqzirab said dismissively. “I was the only constant in a world full of changes for thousands of years. I brought him news of his father when his own siblings wouldn’t so much as acknowledge his existence. Most people would get attached under those circumstances. And Gadreel… he loves very easily.”</p><p>“I don’t mean a general angelic love,” Crowley corrected him. “I mean-”</p><p>“Oh neither do I, he’s rubbish at that,” Aqzirab said with a wave of his hand. “He smuggled children onto the Ark, convinced the Hebrews to shelter their neighbors in the slave quarter so Lilithel would pass them all over… no, he’s very bad at the whole ‘we’re hurting the humans for their own long-term good’ angelic kind of love. He loves me, in a very personal and quite probably romantic fashion. It’s just not enough.”</p><p>“Not enough for what?” Crowley demanded.</p><p>“Enough to tie him to me,” Aqzirab said. “Gadreel loves me, yes. He also loves his family. And I decided very early on that I was never going to make him choose.” [4]</p><p>“If you’ve averted Armageddon, then I’d say he’s probably made his choice,” Crowley pointed out.</p><p>“Between Heaven and Earth, yes,” Aqzirab replied. “But his family… that’s a separate issue entirely. He’s lived in hope of their forgiveness for six thousand years. At this point, it’s as much a part of him as his dislike of dead children. I wouldn’t see him change, not for anything. I don’t understand it. I don’t think I’m capable of understanding it, really, but that doesn’t matter. It’s there, and I won’t make him choose.”</p><p>“Bollocks,” Crowley said.</p><p>“Is it?” Aqzirab asked. “Think about it. You and Gadreel, you must have had the same lives, prior to the War. Upbringing makes all the difference, after all, and here the difference is that you had one and I didn’t. You had your family of artists: a parental figure who guided and protected you, and two hundred odd siblings to cooperate and compete with as you spun the stars. When I was created I was given a commanding officer, marching orders, and a flaming sword, and that has been me ever since.”</p><p>“Bollocks,” Crowley said again.</p><p>“And what part of my existence, is it, exactly, that sounds like bollocks to you?” Aqzirab demanded coldly.</p><p>“The part where you can’t understand what it means to have a family, for example. Let’s start with that one,” Crowley said. “Because where I come from, Heaven was family to Aziraphale, marching orders and all. Your angel spent six thousand years chasing approval from his family? Well, guess what, so did mine. And guess what? When it came down to it, he realized that they weren’t worth it.”</p><p>“Oh, so you’ve got yourself all sorted out then?” Aqzirab sneered. It was really weird, seeing a well-practiced sneer on a face that still looked very much like Aziraphale’s. “Did this timeline steal you away from domestic bliss with my angelic counterpart?”</p><p>“Not exactly,” Crowley admitted, before adding. “Not yet.”</p><p>“Oh? But you’ve got a plan in the works then, is that it?” Aqzirab said mockingly. “Some grand scheme to win my angelic counterpart’s heart?”</p><p>“No, it’s just- he needs time, okay?” Crowley thought back, to 1967, and that little ridiculous tartan thermos that had clearly cost Aziraphale dearly to part with, and those words <i>You go too fast for me, Crowley.</i> “He’s told me that. He needs time.”</p><p>“Time for what?” Aqzirab demanded.</p><p>“Time to recover,” Crowley snapped. “Look, you said that part of the rift between Gadr-ack. Between angel-me and his family was that he wouldn’t apologize for doing what he thought was right. Well Aziraphale did apologize. Every. Single. Time. He would put a toe over the line, and whether it was too many minor miracles or something bigger like hanging the jury at Oscar Wilde’s first trial, when they would come down on him he would apologize and convince himself that they were right. Same with all those shit order they gave him- he followed them, and he convinced themselves that they had to be right. He trusted them. Breaking with Heaven involved him acknowledging, for the first bloody time, how broken that trust was. It’s- it was a lot. It’s a lot more than I had to deal with, I already knew that Hell was shit.” Crowley sighed. “Look, he has to know what my feelings are, and he has to know that they haven’t changed. I can wait for him to catch up. We’ll go as slow as he needs us to.” [5]</p><p>Aqzirab was silent for a time. “That sounds very well-reasoned. Let me ask you something, though. You said that one of your sisters had stabbed you in the neck- the one formerly known as Taniel, or so I would guess, given how things played out in this timeline. Would you have been willing to write off your family before then?”</p><p>“Did none of my siblings attend his execution?” Crowley asked. “Because if so, I’d say your question is moot.”</p><p>“An official execution is not quite the same thing as an attempted murder,” Aqzirab retorted.</p><p>“Less personal, you mean?” Crowley challenged. “Look me in the eyes and tell me that your executions weren’t personal. Because, let me tell you, in my timeline they really, really were.”</p><p>Aqzirab said nothing. After a moment of silence, Crowley heard the door open again.</p><p>The man who walked through the door was a demon, dressed in an ill-fitting dark green jumper and pants that looked stained in algae. There were patches of silver scale along his temples and his teeth, when he smiled his teeth were needle sharp. Other than that, though, he looked exactly how Crowley remembered the Archangel Raphael looking.</p><p>“Lord Raffai!” Aqzirab cried, jumping to his feet. “This is… unexpected.” [6]</p><p>“That was my hope, Aqzirab,” Raffai said. “Now, let’s get you out of here so we can clean up this mess.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>[1]”Are we sure this is a good idea?” Gadreel asked.<br/>“Can you think of a single better one?” Aziraphale asked as he drew another sigil onto the prayer circle.<br/>“Yeah, actually,” Gadreel said. “Let me do the praying. If nothing else, the shock of an angel who Fell after the War suddenly not being a demon should ensure that someone important takes the call.”<br/><i>And they don’t know me,</i> Gadreel thought. <i>They don’t know how to hurt me, the way they know how to hurt you.</i><br/>Aziraphale hesitated, and then sighed, and handed the chalk over. “Very well, then, but you’d better draw the blasted thing, if you’re going to be the one using it.”</p><p>[2]”Huh,” Gadreel said, as the face of the Metatron faded from view. “That was Enoch.”<br/>“Was he not Enoch in your timeline?” Aziraphale asked.<br/>“Nope,” Gadreel said. “We gave Mehujael the job.”<br/>“Ah,” Aziraphale replied. “I must confess, I haven’t the faintest idea who that was.”</p><p>[3] There was nothing to do but wait for Heaven to arrive, and Gadreel was very bad at waiting. “Have you told him yet?” he asked.<br/>Aziraphale paused, and for a moment Gadreel was sure he was going to pretend like he didn’t know what he was on about. But that would have been silly. They were both angels, both beings of love. Gadreel could feel Aziraphale’s yearning almost as keenly as he could feel his own, though whether that was because it was for some version of Gadreel and he was some version of Aqzirab or because it was just that strong was anyone’s guess.<br/>“No, I have not,” Aziraphale admitted. “Have you?”<br/>“Nope. Me neither.”</p><p>[4] “Here’s the thing: I’m pretty sure he loves me, but I don’t know if he knows that, and I don’t know if he <i>wants</i> that,” Gadreel said. “Aqzirab, he’s not exactly shy about what he wants. He’s not even very patient about getting it. I once watched him spend half a million pounds at auction just to speed things along to the book he actually wanted to buy! He’s never said anything about wanting me, though. Not even once.”</p><p>[5] “I would love to say that I’m certain that Crowley loves me,” Aziraphale said. “But I spent six thousand years convincing myself that I was loved by Heaven. I don’t quite trust myself, there. I could just be projecting my own desires onto him, and then where would we be?”</p><p>[6] They sat there for a long while, in the sort of uncomfortable silence that springs between two people who wished they could help one another, but really couldn’t. Then, at long last, there was a knock on the door.<br/>“It’s Gabriel,” Aziraphale confirmed as he peered through the peephole. “And he’s not alone.”<br/>“Oh?” Gadreel asked.<br/>“Yes, he’s brought Beelzebub, which I suppose I can’t really be surprised by at this juncture” Aziraphale said. “And the Archangel Raphael is with them too. That’s odd. I haven’t seen him in donkey’s years.” He was throwing open the deadbolt as he said it, and therefore missed the poleaxed expression of Gadreel’s face.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0007"><h2>7. Chapter 7</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The three of them walked out of the prison, Crowley and Aqzirab followed by Raffai.</p><p>“If you’re following me, it means that I trust you enough to turn my back to you, which is suspicious,” Raffai explained. “This way it looks less like a prison break and more like a prisoner transfer. Possibly an unauthorized one, depending on if and who tries to stop us.”</p><p>“I’d like for no one to stop us, if possible,” Crowley said.</p><p>“We’re in complete agreement, but I find it’s best to anticipate all possibilities,” Raffai said serenely.</p><p>They walked for a moment, in awkward silence. They passed a few angels in the hall, who gave them dirty looks but did not stop them. Crowley wondered how close a working relationship Heaven and Hell had in this timeline, and suddenly realized that there was someone he could ask that would probably know it. He was a Lord of Hell over here, after all. [1]</p><p>“So. Raffai, is it, over here?” he asked.</p><p>“Yes. And you’re Crowley, correct? You changed it?”</p><p>“Well, I can’t even say the name God gave me, so-”</p><p>“From Crawley, I mean.”</p><p>Somehow, despite walking down a level corridor, Crowley managed to miss a step. “How could you know-”</p><p>“Raffai,” Aqzirab said, sounding deeply annoyed. “Is there something you’ve forgotten to tell us?”</p><p>“I would have told you sooner, but you never asked,” Raffai retorted.</p><p>“And how, pray tell, was I supposed to know to ask about alternate timelines?” Aqzirab demanded.</p><p>“You’re the one with the collection of Bibles,” Raffai said. “Did you never wonder what was meant by the phrase ‘divide waters from waters’?”</p><p>Aqzirab had no answer to that. [2]</p><p>“I created the firmament on Her orders, and in order to test the division, She granted me a choice,” Raffai continued. “The first choice in all of creation, though I wouldn’t tell either Sataniel or Satan that.”</p><p>“What was the choice?” Crowley asked.</p><p>“Duty or family. What else?” Raffai said. “Now, turn left here.”</p><p>Aqzirab and Crowley turned left.</p><p>“You took us out to the far reaches of the universe here,” Crowley said. “Aqzirab told me. We missed the War that way.”</p><p>“Yes” Raffai said. “This is the reality that manifested when I chose family- or one of them, at least. I was the first one, not the only one, to be granted a choice. In doing so, I abandoned my post. You and most of the rest of my children were friends with Sataniel from before the Revolution, which was enough for us to get our feet back in the door upon our return. But we hadn’t fought alongside the Rebels, and that made us suspect. I, in particular, was not trusted. After that mess in the Garden, I knew one of us was going to be an example of, and put myself forward. I can’t say I regret it. Falling, as you both know, is not a fun process, and Gadreel is the only one of my children who would give me the time of day now, but it could be worse. They’re all still alive, after all, and if I’d chosen duty, as I did in your timeline Crowley, I’d be utterly miserable.”</p><p>“Can’t say I feel all that bad for him,” Crowley drawled. He was glad to be facing away from Raffai, and he still missed his sunglasses. He’d woken up without them, and now that he was marching around Heaven his face felt naked. “Do you know what he did to Azazel?” [3]</p><p>“Yes, of course,” Raffai replied. “As you’ve noticed, despite the early differentiation, our timelines are remarkably similar. It allowed us to keep in touch, and satisfy our curiosity as to how our lives would have been different. As I said, I have no regrets as to my choices.”</p><p>Every was silent for a moment, digesting that, until Raffai said “And a right here, if you don’t mind.”</p><p>“The amount of contact between you and the Archangel Raphael of Crowley’s timeline wouldn’t have anything to do with this switch, would it?” Aqzirab asked shrewdly as they turned right.</p><p>“A bit,” Raffai admitted. “The frequency with which I communicate with Raphael essentially built a preset channel into the firmament, allowing an easier exchange between these two timelines than most.”</p><p>“So, who was responsible for this?” Crowley asked.</p><p>“Zebuleon and Gabriel,” Raffai said. “Which shouldn’t have come as a surprise, given that the main mechanism for communicating through the firmament is in Heaven- I built myself a backdoor, which is why I can still access it even though I’m no longer affiliated- but whenever Raphael and I discussed this possibility, we thought it would be two variations of the same person. My money was on Zebuleon and Beelzebub: his was on Ghalittor and Gabriel.”</p><p>“What I don’t understand is why this was deemed necessary in the first place,” Aqzirab said. “Surely there was no need to invoke multiple timelines to make Gadreel Fall?” [4]</p><p>“You’re mostly right,” Raffai admitted. “Sataniel negotiated a certain number of Falls at his discretion when he brokered peace between God and the Rebels, but he used them all before Armageddon. And in Raphael’s timeline, a Fall can only happen at the direct command of God Herself.”</p><p>“Then why-” Aqzirab began.</p><p>“Oh fuck me,” Crowley interrupted him. “It’s a red herring, isn’t it? The whole Falling bit.”</p><p>“Along with your Rising, which is what they tried to pass this all off as in your timeline,” Raffai confirmed. “This isn’t about you or Gadreel, and it isn’t about you or Aziraphale. It’s about the fact that all four of you shouldn’t have been able to survive your executions, and yet you did. Another right here.”</p><p>They turned right, and then right again, and then left, none of them speaking save for Raffai’s directions. Crowley kept trying to catch Aqzirab’s eye, trying to ask without words <i>Does he know?</i> but found that he couldn’t read the answer there.</p><p>So finally he just asked. “Do you know?”</p><p>“Yes, of course,” Raffai said. “I know about every significant choice just about anyone makes, when I so choose to access that knowledge.”</p><p>Crowley half turned around, just enough to catch the reassuring smile before it sharpened into a smirk. “And all four of you chose to be different than you were dictated to be.” [5]</p><p>“Oh?” Crowley asked, keeping his tone even. He knew. Raffai knew, and probably Raphael too, though for whatever reason he wasn’t going to spread the information around.</p><p>“You, Crowley are a demon who will not choose cruelty unless pushed, just as you, Aqzirab, are a demon who will not choose violence,” Raffai said.</p><p>“Say it a bit louder, why don’t you,” Aqzirab huffed. “It’s not like I plan to keep existing in this timeline or anything.”</p><p>“Meanwhile,” Raffai said, giving no indication that he’d heard the objection. “Gadreel is an angel who clings to his own personal system of ethics, and Aziraphale is an angel who will not answer a call to arms.”</p><p>“Is that why they demoted him to Principality?” Aqzirab asked.</p><p>“Oh, he wasn’t demoted,” Raphael assured him. “He simply didn’t wish to be a soldier any more, but he wasn’t exactly allowed to resign his commission. So he took the transfer down to the Garden- the decided against reconstituting the Watchers, so Principalities were the original Eden guardians, in Raphael’s timeline- and got so good at avoiding conflict that when push came to shove and the Great War seemed imminent he became Heaven’s first conscientious objector.”</p><p>Aqzirab made a thoughtful kind of noise.</p><p>“They thought that, by switching you for your counterparts, they could find out how you survived without break the contract and covenant created by your release,” Raffai continued. “Not a terrible idea on the face of it, if a tad excessive. But at any rate, it hardly matters now: that fact that you and Gadreel were switched is destabilizing both timelines.” [6]</p><p>“It is?” Crowley asked. He half-expected the walls of Heaven to start shaking around them for dramatic effect.</p><p>“Yes. You’ve noticed the effects here- a holy spear which did not behave in a holy matter, a demon trap which captured angels. In Raphael’s timeline, there have already been casualties.”</p><p>“Causalities,” Aqzirab said urgently. “Are they-”</p><p>“Your angelic counterparts are both just fine. They’re running a little ahead of us, actually,” Raffai informed them. But things will only get worse the longer you and Gadreel are in a foreign universe. There’s nothing for it, I’m afraid. You and Gadreel will need to be switched back. This is us.” [7]</p><p>They stopped outside a door which was identical to every other door they’d passed so far.</p><p>“Here, I think you’re going to want these,” Raffai said, and pulled out Crowley’s sunglasses from his pants pockets.</p><p>“Thanks,” Crowley said as he put them on. “Why?”</p><p>“Because unless I’ve misjudged them- and I very rarely misjudge anyone-” Raffai opened the door, reveal Zebuleon and Ghalittor. “They’ve been listening to every word we just said.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>[1] The last time Gadreel had seen his father, they’d been in Hell, and Gadreel had been wearing Aqzirab’s corporation.<br/>“Thank you for looking out for him,” Raffai had said.<br/>Gadreel had made the sort of grunt Aqzirab made when the dessert menu was inadequate.<br/>“I mean that,” Raffai continued. “He’s been a friend.”<br/>A friend. Not a son, a friend. Thankfully Aqzirab had a resting stone face, so Gadreel didn’t have to put any effort into suppressing his shock. Raffai knew. His father <i>knew</i>.<br/>“If this works, I doubt we’ll see each other again any time soon,” Raffai continued. “So I just wanted to get that out of the way.”<br/>“Thank you for unburdening yourself on me one last time,” Gadreel said, because he was still pretending to be Aqzirab.<br/>Raffai had smirked, and left, and Gadreel had made certain that Aqzirab escaped his execution unscathed.</p><p>[2] The last time he’d seen the Archangel Raphael, it had been at his trial after the whole mess with the Garden. He looked different now, and it wasn’t just the modern suit, or the lack of greenish nebulae embedded in his temples. His eyes were as flat as they were green, and he didn’t smile at all.</p><p>[3] “Dad?” Gadreel asked.<br/>“What,” said Aziraphale, echoed by both Beelzebub and Gabriel.<br/>“No. That’s not a box which needs to be opened,” Raphael said. “I’m not your father, and I never can be.”</p><p>[4] “Congratulations, though,” he added after a moment. “You figured them out before your counterparts did. They still think it’s to do with you Falling, somehow.”<br/>“So this was all a ploy to figure out how we survived our executions, then?” Aziraphale asked.<br/>“Yes.”</p><p>[5] “Unfortunately for them,” Raphael shot a glare at his companions, who looked unrepentant. “They meddled in things which were specifically designed to not be meddled with, and now both timelines are becoming destabilized.”<br/>Aziraphale and Gadreel looked around, and then back to Raphael.<br/>“How can you tell?” Gadreel asked suspiciously.<br/>“The holy water in Heaven turned caustic,” Gabriel said.<br/>“And Hellfire is no longer survivable by demons,” Beelzebub added.<br/>“Oh dear,” said Aziraphale.</p><p>[6] “The mechanism for piercing the firmament is in Heaven,” said Raphael. “But I have a backdoor, and we can perform the ritual here if you like.”<br/>“That wasn’t our agreement,” Gabriel said sharply.<br/>“It is now,” Raphael said.</p><p>[7] “What would this ritual require?” Aziraphale asked.<br/>“For right now, a bit of waiting,” Raphael said. “My counterpart, Raffai, is going to collect your counterparts as we speak. Once they are assembled and have properly calibrated their equipment, we can begin.”</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0008"><h2>8. Chapter 8</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“Okay, so here’s the thing,” Crowley said. “We just passed a several angels on our way here, and I’m pretty sure one of them was Jezebel, which is just absolutely bonkers on so many levels that none of you even know what I’m talking about, do you?”</p><p>There were quite a lot of calibrations that needed to be done on the multiverse thing, and none of them could be done by Crowley. Actually, none of them could be done by anyone but Raffai, but Zebuleon and Ghalittor were needed to explain what they’d touched and why they’d thought touching it was an acceptable thing to do. Freed of any other obligations, Crowley reverted to his natural state: asking questions and making a general nuisance of himself.</p><p>“Okay, so let’s just start with the name. Jezebel was her name in my timeline, but it can’t have been here. Because her name means ‘where is the prince’, the prince being Ba’al who wasn’t a pagan god, per say, so much as Beelzebub having set up a cult for themselves. But there was no Beelzebub here, because you, Zebuleon, are still an angel, and therefore wouldn’t be going around starting cults to yourself would  you?”</p><p>Zebuleon did not deign to acknowledge him in any way, shape, or form, so he continued. “And, you know what’s even more bonkers? I recognized her. I recognized her, because she’s got the exact same physical form as she did back in the day in Samaria, which does imply that she entered Heaven alive. That is <i>fascinating</i> to me. Because she’s considered a false prophet in my timeline, and the guy who opposed her, the ‘true’ prophet, was this bloke named Elijah, and he’s really famous for entering Heaven alive. A bit of a righteous ass, Elijah, though Heaven tends to put the emphasis on righteous in my timeline. Did that whole bit with the drought under King Ahab, and there was that whole thing where he suppressed the power of Ba’al’s priests on Mount Carmel, and <i>then</i> he ended up getting swept up into Heaven in chariot of fire, it was all very dramatic. So was there Elijah in this timeline? Were he and Jezebel co-prophets, or were they still enemies? Because if they were enemies in this timeline, that means that their devotions were switched around, which, is actually <i>hilarious</i> because everyone in my timeline, at least, is under the impression that prophets are chosen by God directly, but if some version of Beelzebub was always going to choose some version of Jezebel and some version of Sandalphon was always going to choose some version of Elijah, then God didn’t factor into half as much as you let everyone believe.”</p><p>“Were you <i>trying</i> to knock them unconscious when you switched them?” Raffai asked. </p><p>“As you can plainly hear, we did not succeed,” Zebuleon told him. </p><p>“So, I’m right. Is that what you’re saying? Because that’s what I’m hearing,” Crowley said. “I’m hearing that Heaven in both timelines goes around picking out prophets from whichever humans they like best and then telling everyone it was God’s will just like drowning everyone in the Flood.”</p><p>“Are you back on that again?” Zebuleon asked. </p><p>“I never got off of it!” Crowley cried. “And-”</p><p>“Can’t you shut him up?” Ghalittor asked. </p><p>“Why in Heaven would I want to do that?” Raffai replied, not looking up from his work. </p><p>“Look, he can and will continue on in this vein for hours,” Aqzirab said. “Can someone please just give him a mobile or something so he can look up the answers for himself?”</p><p>Zebuleon looked to Ghalittor, who sighed and rolled his eyes. He reached into the inside pocket of his jacket- still immaculately tailored even as a demon- and pulled out a familiar looking mobile phone?</p><p>“That’s my mobile!” Aqzirab cried. </p><p>“Yeah, I was going to see if I could maybe get one of Araph’s people to crack the warding but you can have it back for now,” Ghalittor said. </p><p>“Wonderful. Now I’m going to have to smash that and get another one,” Aqzirab groaned. “Do you have any idea what kind of pain one has to go through to change over one’s mobile contracts? You really did not give me enough credit for that.”</p><p>“You’re not currently being strung up in the deepest pits of hell for the imps to beat open like a piñata and then having your entrails devoured,” Ghalittor snapped. “That’s as much credit as you can hope to get.”</p><p>Aqzirab squared his shoulders. “I don’t think you quite understand what the word ‘credit’ means, sir.”</p><p>“Enough,” Zebuleon groaned. “Just hand him his damned mobile back.”</p><p>Ghalittor grumbled, but handed Aqzirab his phone. Aqzirab unlocked it with a sigh, before handing it to Crowley.</p><p>“I don’t suppose my angelic counterpart has come up with any bright ideas as how to make these things a little more secure,” Aqzirab grumbled. </p><p>“No, he doesn’t have one,” Crowley replied. “A mobile, that is.”</p><p>“What?” Aqzirab asked. “How?”</p><p>“He feels like it’s an unnecessarily modern affectation, and that there’s nothing a mobile does that couldn’t be better done over the mail, telephone, or in person,” Crowley said. </p><p>Aqzirab stared at him. </p><p>“Yeah, I don’t get it either,” Crowley said. “It’s not like he doesn’t have a computer or anything either. It’s a clunky old Apple Macintosh that he only uses to pay taxes with, but he has one,” Crowley said. </p><p>“Why does he pay taxes?” Aqzirab asked. </p><p>“I don’t know,” Crowley admitted. </p><p>Aqzirab sighed, and settled back against the wall. “If I’m guessing correctly, you probably want to start with Yezerel and Xhanjah,” he informed him. </p><p>Crowley shrugged, opened up the browser, and typed his best guess as to how those names were spelled in the search bar. </p><p>It was a slow moving several minutes after that. Zebuleon and Ghalittor snipped at Raffai, and then Raffai sent them snipping at one another. Aqzirab stayed slouched against the wall, unless Ghalittor had just said something particularly cutting. Then he straightened up, standing at parade rest until he caught himself and slouched back once more. </p><p><i>You’ve never had a chance to stop being a soldier, did you?</i> Crowley thought. <i>Right up until Armageddon, you probably never even had a chance to stand down a bit.</i></p><p>He looked back down at the mobile, and after a moment to think, tapped the name of a website into  the search bar. It still existed in this timeline. </p><p>“Thank Whoever it was that made the humans like this,” he muttered to himself, before he realized. <i>Oh. That was me, wasn’t it?</i></p><p>No one was paying him any attention, so it was simple enough to do what he needed to do. And, as an added bonus, by the time he’d finished they were just about ready to go. </p><p>“And how will we know if they’re ready?” Zebuleon asked. </p><p>“I know,” Raffai said. “And Raphael knows. They’ve been waiting for us to catch up to them for almost two hours.” [1]</p><p>“I’ve got a question I cannot ask the internet,” Crowley said. “How come you can say your old name?”</p><p>“Because when I say it, I’m not saying my old name,” Raffai replied. “I’m saying the name of a version of me who lives in an alternate universe.”</p><p>“Huh,” said Crowley. “And that works?”</p><p>“Obviously.”</p><p>Crowley shrugged, and thought about that for a moment: thought about the stranger with the scores of siblings who wouldn’t speak to him, and the demon father who would, and who had a starving artist’s studio where he painted but never sculpted and never kept any plants.</p><p>Crowley could have been him, as he could have been Crowley, but they weren’t.</p><p>“Right,” he said, handing the phone back to Aqzirab. “I’m ready to go home, and I’m sure Gadreel is too. Are we good?” [2]</p><p>“We’re good,” Raffai said, and threw a switch. </p><p>There was no portal, no sudden rip in the firmament. There was a room in one universe, and then a room in an entirely different one, and then they were one and the same. </p><p>“Huh,” said Gadreel, looking a little shocked behind his glasses. “You’re… ginger. I wasn’t expecting that.”</p><p>Aziraphale was taking in the sight of Aqzirab, stony faced. Aqzirab looked equally as frozen, and then he let out another unholy bleat of laughter and doubled over. </p><p>“What is your problem?” Crowley demanded. </p><p>“That,” Aqzirab gasped, pointing not at Aziraphale but at Gabriel. “Mikka, he looks even more insufferable as an angel than he does as a demon.”</p><p>“Hey!” Gabriel protested. </p><p>“You look like you’re about to explain why fracking actually improves water quality!” Aqzirab continued, looking back to Crowley as he straightened back up. “Dear me, no wonder you laughed when you saw Zebuleon.”</p><p>For a moment everyone looked over to where Zebuleon and Beelzebub were having a staring contest. </p><p>“Right,” said Raffai and Raphael as one.</p><p>“The longer we keep this open, the greater the likelihood of lingering damage,” Raffai continued.</p><p>“So switch back. Trading places with your counterpart should be all that’s required,” Raphael finished.</p><p>They switched, Gadreel taking his place next to Aqzirab and Crowley next to Aziraphale. Then the connection faded, leaving everyone in the correct universe. </p><p>After everything that had come before, it felt more than a little anticlimactic. He took a better look around, and frowned. </p><p>“Are we in my flat?” he asked. </p><p>“Yes, I’m afraid we are,” Aziraphale said. “Sorry, we needed a place to go to ground, and this seemed like the best place to do it.”</p><p>“Yeah, it was about time for me to move again, anyway,” Crowley said. </p><p>For a long moment, no one said anything, too busy mentally assessing one another. It would be a two on three fight again, if it came down to it, Crowley noted grimly.</p><p>“I think it’s time for us to take our leave,” Raphael said. [3]</p><p>Gabriel opened his mouth.</p><p>“And leave you in peace, as per the agreements reached upon termination of your employment with Heaven and Hell, respectively,” Raphael continued. </p><p>Gabriel closed his mouth.</p><p>Beelzebub sighed, and turned to leave. “Thizz wazz a wazzte of time.”</p><p>Crowley had almost missed their buzzing. Almost. </p><p>He hadn’t really missed it all, come to think of it, it was just more familiar to him than Zebuleon’s cold, holy distain. </p><p>Gabriel followed Beelzebub out, and Raphael followed them both. He was just moving to close the door behind the three of them when Crowley spoke up. “Dad.” [4]</p><p>Raphael hesitated. “I’m not sure you should call me that.”</p><p>“Neither am I, really, but, I’m not sure I shouldn’t, either,” Crowley said. “I mean, you’ve done some shit, yeah…”</p><p>“And you’re a demon,” Raphael said. </p><p>“And apparently that makes no appreciable difference to the fate of the world whatsoever,” Crowley said, with a strained laugh. Satan, but this had been a lot more than a bit of a day. “Look, it’s just: you don’t have to keep making the same choice, you know. You could- you could always make a different one.”</p><p>“Could I?” Raphael asked. “I’ve consistently made the same one for over six thousand years now. It’s the sort of thing that sticks with you.”</p><p>“That doesn’t mean you can’t try something new,” Crowley pointed out. “You might be surprised.”</p><p>Raphael didn’t reply. After a moment he just closed the door behind him and left, which Crowley supposed was answer enough. </p><p>“Well, I’m glad to see you home and well,” Aziraphale said. “You <i>are</i> well, I trust?”</p><p>“Yeah.” Crowley breathed in, healed the bruises he still had from getting slammed around in that cell, and breathed back out. “Yeah, I’m good.”</p><p>“Good, I’m glad to hear it,” Aziraphale said. “Well, I- you’ll be sleeping now, I expect.”</p><p>“Eh. Maybe when I’m less wired,” Crowley said. “Right now… do you mind if we go somewhere? Back to the bookshop, even?”</p><p>“Oh yes,” Aziraphale said. “I was just thinking this morning before all of this hullabaloo started up that it might be time to open that bottle of Colheita port, if you’d be amenable.”</p><p>“Yeah angel,” Crowley replied. “That sounds perfect.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>[1] That backdoor Raphael had made for himself actually did require a fair bit of setting up. Unfortunately, the bulk of this set up was the prayer circle Aziraphale and Gadreel had previously drawn, so they spent the bulk of this time standing around it in a state of awkward and moderately hostile silence. </p><p>[2] “Brace yourselves,” Raphael said. He hadn’t looked Gadreel square in the face the entire time they’d been waiting, which was quite the accomplishment considering how little else there was to look at. “They’re finally ready.”</p><p>[3] “Now, you’re going to let them leave,” Dad said quietly. <br/>“We are?” Zebuleon asked. <br/>“Well, they can leave and go to Hell,” Ghalittor pointed out. <br/>“No,” Dad said. “You’re going to let them return to Earth. You, Ghalittor, are going to do so because I am sometimes the only thing standing between you and obliteration, and if you do not allow them to leave, the next time the opportunity presents itself I will step aside instead. And you, Zebuleon, are going to do so because this has been a tremendous embarrassing, borderline disastrous blunder, and you don’t want that getting out, not when you’ve already had to call Sataniel in to clean it up once. And you are both going let them go because that was part of the contract implied by their first release.”</p><p>[4] They’d almost backed up to the door when Dad said “Aqzirab.”<br/>Aqzirab stopped. “Lord Raffai?”<br/>“Don’t forget your sword,” he said, and the sword in question materialized on the small filing cabinet next to the door. Aqzirab snatched it up quickly. <br/>“Go,” Dad urged them, and Aqzirab reached out with his free hand and pulled Gadreel through the doorway with him. <br/>“Do you know how to get to the exit from here?” he asked. <br/>“I’m pretty sure,” Gadreel replied. “Can you hide that thing?”<br/>“I’m pretty sure not,” Aqzirab said. <br/>“Then they’re going to be chasing us anyway so we might as well run,” Gadreel said. “Come on.” <br/>And off they went. They didn’t stop until they were back safely home on Earth.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0009"><h2>9. Chapter 9</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“Yikes,” Gadreel said, as they came in through the door. “What happened here?”</p><p>“Zebuleon and their two favorite goons paid me a visit,” Aqzirab said. “There was a bit of a fight- your demonic counterpart acquitted himself quite well, actually. Oh, do be a dear, and get rid of the demon trap on the floor, will you? I’m going to put this sword away, and then I need to give this place a good sweeping out.”</p><p>Gadreel looked at him incredulously. Perhaps to spite him, after Gadreel had removed the trap and Aqzirab had snapped the furniture and books back into place, he picked up a broom from the stockroom and began to sweep.</p><p>“Big plans for tomorrow?” Gadreel asked.</p><p>“Oh yes,” Aqzirab replied. “I have ‘accidentally’ double booked a meeting of the Flat Earth Society and the Hollow Earth Society. The fireworks promise to be spectacular.”</p><p>And, by keeping the conspiracy groups from doing anything but fighting one another, he prevented them from going mainstream. Gadreel knew better than to point that out.</p><p>“I bet you must have gotten along great with Crowley,” Gadreel said. “From what Aziraphale was telling me that’s exactly the sort of thing he’d appreciate.”</p><p>“Oh?” Aqzirab asked. “I must confess, aside from the big ones- the Garden, Jesus- we didn’t really discuss our respective works for Hell.”</p><p>“Yeah, apparently when they were building the M25 in his world, he realized that it looked very similar to the sigil odegra, so he hacked into things and switched some of the construction markers around so it <em>was</em> the sigil odegra,” Gadreel said.</p><p>Aqzirab froze, mid-sweep. “Oh fuck,” he said after a moment. “It does look like that, doesn’t it?”</p><p>“I wouldn’t feel too bad about missing that, if I were you,” Gadreel said. “Apparently, that caused the M25 to turn into a ring of Hellfire on the day the Apocalypse was due.”</p><p>“Oh, well then,” Aqzirab said, and resumed sweeping.</p><p>“So, how did you get on with him, then?” Gadreel asked.</p><p>“Just fine,” Aqzirab said. “He was very much like you, really. A different color pallet, of course, and he was a tad more anxious, I think. He had a lot of questions though, so mostly he just reminded me of you.”</p><p>“Oh?”</p><p>“Yes, it really seemed to bother him, how similar our timelines were. Every time he came across a significant difference, he wanted it explained in detail so he could figure out how that was different when nothing else was,” Aqzirab said. He reached into his pocket, and pulled out his phone. “Eventually I just told him to look it up himself. Ghalittor got his hands all over that, I’m afraid, so if you want a peek at his search history before I shred the thing, now’s your chance.”</p><p>“Yeah, alright,” Gadreel said, so Aqzirab tossed him his phone.</p><p>Crowley had gone on a wikiwalk, it seemed, starting with the old Canaanite religion and branching out from there. And then, for some reason, he’d visited a page that showed up in the history tab as GADREEL LOOK AT THIS!!!</p><p>Gadreel snuck a look at Aqzirab. He was sweeping still, hips swaying slightly as he hummed tunelessly. He made sure that the volume was on the lowest possible setting that wasn’t mute, and opened it up.</p><p>It was a video- a video of Crowley which Gadreel had been expecting, really. He snuck another look at Aqzirab and then pressed play.</p><p>“Look, I don’t have a lot of time,” Crowley muttered. Gadreel held the phone up close to his face so he could hear. “So I’m just going to say it. He’s in love with you.”</p><p>Gadreel nearly dropped the phone.</p><p>“He’s in love with you, and I’m pretty sure you are too,” Crowley continued. “I mean, you’re me, albeit a version of me that’s had a really different life, but… he’s still here, and I can’t imagine not loving him, so.” Crowley was silent for a moment. “And he knows you love him. He’s said as much. He just… he doesn’t want to force you to choose between him and your family. He’s said that. And I think- I think you’ve already made your choice, when you cut ties with Heaven.”</p><p>“I don’t know what’s holding you back,” Crowley said. “I don’t know if you’re worried about hurting him, or if you’re worried that you’re going to rush into something that really shouldn’t be rushed, or if, maybe I’m just talking myself into talking to Aziraphale about it, but. You should tell him. You should. Because he is never going to make the first move on his own.”</p><p>That was the end of the video. Gadreel stared down at the phone for a time, and then he stared at Aqzirab for so long that the demon noticed and turned back to him with a frown.</p><p>“Is there a problem, darling?” he asked.</p><p>“A problem, no,” Gadreel said cautiously. “But I think there’s something we need to talk about.”</p>
<hr/><p>The port was excellent, rich and complex, and potent enough that Aziraphale had undone his bowtie and removed his shoes, and was now giggling his way through some story involving a fire hydrant and baby squid rolls.</p><p><em>Come on</em> Crowley told himself. <em>Do it. Just ask him. What’s the worst he could say, no? Just a flat no, not a not yet?</em></p><p>It was the worst thing Aziraphale could say. Crowley took another glass of port to fortify himself. He had, to date, done that seven times this evening.</p><p>He did it twice more before he actually plucked up the courage to say it.</p><p>“Say, Aziraphale. You know that place in Brixton? L’Amuse-Bouche?”</p><p>“Oh yes, they do some wonderful savory crêpes,” Aziraphale said.</p><p>“We should go there, tomorrow, maybe,” Crowley said.</p><p>Aziraphale frowned at him.</p><p>“I’d never say no to a good crêpe,” he replied. “Is there any particular reason why-”</p><p>“I was thinking it could be a date,” Crowley blurted out. Aziraphale blinked at him. “I mean, it doesn’t have to be. We could just go there to eat, but-”</p><p>“Just so we’re clear,” Aziraphale said, sitting upright. No small amount of port reappeared in the bottle as he did so. “How different would eating out be, as a date, as opposed to usual?”</p><p>“Probably not very different,” Crowley said. “I mean, not the eating part, at least. I might kiss you at the door afterwards. I might kiss you a bit beyond the door, even, if you’d like.”</p><p>Aziraphale came and sat down next to him on the settee. He placed a hand on Crowley’s cheek. It was very distracting, that hand.</p><p>“Could you sober up, my dear?” he asked. “I- I would very much like for our first kiss to be sober.”</p><p>Crowley was so busy smiling that it took him a moment to realize that he would have to sober up before Aziraphale would kiss him. “Yeah! Sure,” he said. “Sure.”</p>
<hr/><p>“He’s not wrong, you know,” Raffai said.</p><p>Raphael scowled. “You of all people should know that it’s not that simple.”</p><p>Raffai laughed. “You of all people should know that it is.”</p><p>“It isn’t,” Raphael insisted.</p><p>“Yes, it is,” Raffai retorted. “Look, you make very consistent decisions, which very consistently make you miserable. There are some versions of us who will always do that, but there’s no reason why you have to be one of them.”</p><p>“Well, I’m pretty sure I just closed the door on that,” Raphael pointed out.</p><p>“So open it again,” Raffai said. “If he was willing to talk to you after the previous six thousand years of fearful silence, I don’t think one short conversation is going to break him.”</p><p>“Perhaps not,” Raphael admitted.</p><p>“Just… think about it, okay?” Raffai asked. “Consider the possibility that you do have multiple options to choose from yourself.”</p><p>“I will,” Raphael said. He sighed. “Same time next week?”</p><p>“Provided Araph doesn’t try to bury me in paperwork,” Raffai said. “She’s always a bit demanding when she’s discorporated.”</p><p>“Well, I’ll leave you to it, then,” Raphael said. “Until next time.”</p><p>“Until next time.”</p><p>With the connection cut, the splendor of the most superficial of layer of the firmament crept back in, the cacophony of stars and galaxies and nebulae. Raphael watched them spin for a time, and remembered a time when they were newly spun into being.</p><p>He would make a decision, eventually. He just hoped that it wouldn’t be the wrong one for the universe. He had a duty, after all, to keep the place spinning.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>With many thanks for Beck, my last-minute beta angel, Lauren, who listened to me gnash my teeth about this on both discord and in real life, and Florencia, my artist.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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